Directed by: Sachindra Vats
Cast: Annu Kapoor, Shilpa Shinde, Milind Soman, Sahil Salathia, Poulomi Das, Anant Joshi, Rajesh Tripathy, Flora Saini, Shaheer Sheikh and others.
Once upon a time in a kingdom there lived a virile king who married multiple times, but his bride would disappear after their much sleazily filmed Suhaag Raat ! Then there’s a hunt for those brides, that’s the basic plot of this ‘period’ web-series which appears more like a film converted into OTT series considering the 2.26 hours length.
And you thank your stars for that length! It’s nothing less than a torture to watch this beautiful trash wherein the producer (the great Ekta Kapoor) dishes out just about any crap in the name of cinematic liberty. Worse, you’ve audience that lap up these shenanigans. Just why?
The director or perhaps it’s the powerful producer’s insistence that they rely entirely on various angles of the female anatomy in-order to attract viewers. Each and every female character is projected as a sex object, used and abused sexually through the vulgar camera angles. Agreed it’s an erotica series but even sexual scenes can be photographed aesthetically, watch Utsav(1984) or Kama Sutra(1996) both made by Indian film makers.
The characters lack any depth here, there’s a king who’s forever sex hungry and a queen who is power thirsty. And far too many cringeworthy embarrassing scenes, not sure if Ekta wanted to invoke laughs or they were meant to titillate the viewers, they surely make you cringe. For example one such scene involves the King bathing in a bathtub soaked with roses and communicating with a part of his body and requesting “it” to “rise” tonight.
Wonder why a veteran like Annu Kapoor worked in this almost soft porn series, very disappointing act. Shilpa Shinde looks breathtakingly gorgeous at times like 90s Manisha Koirala, but sad to see her being projected as a sex symbol with generous cleavage display. Shaheer Sheikh a major tv star appears in just two passable scenes promising to take over in season two( god help us!), Milind Soman playing a transgender tries sincerely to breathe in some oxygen in a badly developed role.
The only role that intrigued is Sahil Salathia’s ‘Bhanu’, there’s no reference as to what his character intends or plans, it’s a complex role considering he’s shown to have sexual relations with the Queen, her son- the prince and the aforementioned transgender as well. And then he’s bumped off unceremoniously, it’s like the writers didn’t know what to do of him.
To be honest, the concept wasn’t bad, it had its moments, wish the erotic scenes were tastefully filmed and there was more focus on content, you also see hypocritical attitude of the makers. They keep harping throughout the series about women empowerment and upliftment but all you see is an unabashed and unapologetic sexual disrobing of the women characters on this show. ⭐️
All pictures courtesy: Zee5 channel and Google images
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