Defying all laws of physics, it is possible for light to escape from a black hole but no human being can escape from the mind-numbing, excruciatingly painful, cringe-worthy 2 hours 20 minutes of sheer absurdity and insufferable nonsense of a film called Laxmii, starring Akshay Kumar streaming in Disney+Hotstar.
If there ever was a case to ask for your money back or in this case the sheer wastage of precious bandwidth, this is it. The question everyone must ask is, how can someone invest time and money into such a film that is not only damaging to all human sensory but is a slap on the face of transpersons in India who are fighting for their rights.
Bollywood has a way of making some of the worst films and this film is so bad, it would not even qualify for a Razzies given each year before the prestigious Oscar.
The writing is so poor, that the writers including the director Raghava Lawrence can actually claim they were possessed by some evil spirit or they must have been smoking top-of-the-line marijuana which is easily available in Bollywood.
The fact is, such scripts can only be written when someone is totally intoxicated and out of their mind. This remake of the 2011 Tamil film ‘Kanchana’, a film that tried to raise awareness about the third gender flatlines from the getgo.
Khiladi Kumar in this film portrays himself as a rational and liberal Muslim man called Asif, married to Hindu women Resham (Kiara Advani who is literally half his age) and runs an organization that fights superstition around ghosts and evil spirits. In an attempt to be progressive, this film epitomises stereotypes, cliches, predictability, and turns out to be a “wokefest” with the background of an inter-faith marriage between a Muslim man Asif and a Hindu girl Reshma.
This film goes out of its way to appease all but pleases none. This film was supposed to be a horror-comedy but it is a complete nightmare for any human being with a semblance of intelligence to watch the film in its entirety.
Disney+Hotstar has some excellent programs that people can watch, however, this time it decided not to have any oversight over the quality of the content and it must be held responsible for wasting everyone’s time. Director Raghava Lawrence must be given full credit for falling asleep behind the wheels as he has no clue where the plot is headed. This film would have been a nightmare for the editor who must have lost his mind trying to make sense when editing.
Akshay Kumar has a history of making some of the most ocularly bad films, but later in his career, he has made films that have resonated with people, like Toilet ek Prem Khata, Pad Man, and Kesari that were well received by the audience.
The only human emotion that this film evokes is that of a person who is badly constipated and wants the misery to end. Luckily since the film was released on streaming service, one can slide the film to the end.
Forcing someone to watch this film should be deemed as cruel and unusual punishment and this film should come with a statutory warning, “Watching this film will lead to your brain cells dying”.