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DAMARU KO DANDIBIYO

CAST: Khagendra Lamichhane, Menuka Pradhan, Anup Baral, Buddhi Tamang

DIRECTION: Chhetan Gurung

Review: Two Stars **

‘Damaru ko Dandibiyo’, as the name suggests, is a story about the nearly-forgotten sport of ‘dandi-biyo’—an indigenous amateur game of sticks played in the hills and plains of Nepal, and in some other parts of the Indian sub-continent. And it has the right mix of good intent and heart. But sometimes it takes more than good intent to make a good movie. This film tries too hard to make us care about the sport, so much so it ends up becoming an educational sports film rather than an entertaining sports drama. After finishing his Masters, Dambar (Khagendra Lamicchane) returns to his village with a mission. He wants to breathe new life into dandi-biyo and expand the pop­ularity of the game within his vil­lage first. For that he calls for help from his old village pals Mukhiya (Buddhi Tamang) and Mala (Menuka Pradhan). His friends are reluctant because they are busy in their own lives—Mukhiya’s a poor shepherd and Mala’s a school teacher. The village kids are not convinced either. Why should they give up football and cricket and pick up a game that they know nothing about?

But the real obstacle in Dambar’s way is his father (Anup Baral), the headmaster of the village school. Before settling in as the headmas­ter, Dambar’s father used to be an exceptional dandi-biyo player and decades ago, he too had harbored similar hopes of making dandi-biyo popular. Things didn’t pan out as planned and since then he’s devel­oped a bitterness towards the game; he’s disgusted by the idea of his son giving up everything to become a torchbearer of dandi-biyo.

The first half of the film is ded­icated to this father-son conflict. There’s nothing new in this graph and the sports genre is overwrought with arcs involving aspirant sons and displeased fathers. ‘Damaru ko Dandibiyo’ draws our attention to the squabble between Lamicchane and Baral, somewhat, even though they don’t remotely look like father and son. But it’s the progression of events in the second half that least convinces.

The screenplay by Lamichhane switches from modest to downright silly, as it catapults the story from Dambar’s village to Kathmandu in a ridiculously staged manner. The later portion lacks the social realism it had when the story was grounded in the village.

For a film that wants us to appre­ciate dandi-biyo, it rarely gives us moments that encapsulate the game’s beauty or burst of energy and make us guilty for ignoring something great. Instead, Lamic­chane peppers the screenplay with jingoist sentiments and makes his characters mouth big words. There’s also a nearly 10-minute-long expo­sition scene where Dambar chalks up the complex rules of the game to explain to his teammates.

Director Chhetan Gurung fails to weave together these informa­tion-heavy scenes with any kind of visual command. Instead he tries to compensate by cranking up tension in every other scene by injecting inspirational background music and 360-degree shots.

All the actors in the movie do a fine job. If only the script had given them a little more life, they would’ve been more lifelike, more relatable. Lamichhane’s Dambar is balled up as a walking-talking activist of dan­di-biyo; not a flesh-and-blood char­acter but more like an ambassador to explicitly champion the philoso­phy of the filmmakers.

‘Damaru ko Dandibiyo’ poses big questions about sustainability and ownership of homegrown sports like dandi-biyo and manifests itself as a love letter to the game from the makers. But it’s written with such broad strokes, flowery imagination and in such a pedantic way, it forgets its first responsibility as a film is to engage and entertain.

Activism apart, ‘Damaru ko Dan­dibiyo’ excites only few times.  

Anmol KC, currently the most popular and also the highest paid actor in Nepali films, is known to be a recluse. He rarely makes pub­lic appearances except during his film’s promotion. But last week, a dapper-looking KC arrived at the Hyatt Regency to attend the 6th NFDC Film Award, handed out every year by the National Film Develop­ment Company. KC had been nominated in the ‘Best Actor’ category for ‘Kri’. Later that evening, he was announced as the winner. This would surprise any regular Nepali moviegoer because KC isn’t someone known for his acting prowess. Since his debut in ‘Hostel’, he has been doing similar masala films that make do with his one-note acting. What con­vinced the jury otherwise will remain a mystery.

But hang on! KC’s victory wasn’t the only big surprise. Milan Chams, who directed the awful romantic comedy ‘Lily Bily’, won best direc­tor and the smash-commer­cial hit ‘Satru Gate’ took home the best film award, while a separate category was created to declare ‘Chakka Panja 2’ the “Best Commer­cial Film”. This isn’t the first time a Nepali award show has glossed over content and craft to recognize only a film’s com­mercial success.

This celebrity-pleasing men­tality that rules over recogni­tion of real talent has plagued the Nepali award circuit for years. Entertainment reporter Manish Anjaan, writing for online film portal ‘filmy­khabar.com’, notes that the NFDC went so far to please the public last year that the win­ners list was disclosed before the start of the actual event! No wonder Anmol KC found time to be come out of his shell for the event; he knew he was going to win.

Although the Nepali year of 2074 saw a handful of movies do well commercially, it was rather forgettable in terms of content-driven cinema. A few films that stood out were Bipin Karki- starrer action-adven­ture ‘Naka’ and Ganesh Dev Panday’s stoner comedy ‘Gaja Baja’. Both films had their share of flaws but they were refreshingly experimental and managed to give us fresh plots and characters.

By contrast, the films that did well in the Box Office— the likes of ‘Kri’, ‘Aishwarya’, ‘Satru Gate’, ‘Chakka Panja 2’, ‘Ma Yesto Geet Gaunchu’, ‘A Mero Hajur 2’ and ‘Prem Geet 2’—were those that strictly fol­lowed the Bollywood formula, in particular the style and editing aesthetics of over-the-top South Indian action flicks, and recycled clichés from the romantic films of Karan Johar and Imtiaz Ali.

With our films happy being seen as cheap knockoffs of Bollywood movies, that our film awards also mimic their Indian counterparts is perhaps no surprise. For instance, many Nepali award shows, undoubtedly inspired by their Indian counterparts, put up unnecessary categories like “Best Newcomer”, “Best Comedy Artist”, and “Best Actor in a Negative Role”. These awards exist not to cele­brate the range of acting but as “token of love” to be handed out to everyone who showed up. A couple of years ago, one random Nepali award show was thoughtful enough to put a “Best Child Artist” category but couldn’t fit real categories like film editing, sound design and production design.

Nepali film awards masquer­ade as events that celebrate the best in cinema. In reality most are musical events that undermine the award aspect of the show and highlight only the actors’ dance moves.

One such event is the yearly NEFTA Awards, organized by the Nepal Film Techni­cian Association (NEFTA), which takes place in a foreign country with a sizable Nepali popu­lation. But the award show is just a front to lure Nepali actors and celebrities in the name of honor­ing them. In reality, these are gimmicks to sell more event tickets. Others have followed the NEFTA way and, as a result, a num­bers of “Inter­n a t i o n a l Nepali Film Awards” h a v e cropped up. Some are one-offs and die after one edition, while oth­ers continue to prey on sponsors and to get attention by inviting popular actors and show­ering them with prizes, regardless of the quality of their work.

Questioning the cred­ibility of these types of award shows, filmmak­ers Deepak Rauniyar, Min Bham, Khagendra Lammichhane and Dipendra K Khanal have in different times issued statements to pull their films out from con­tention. But most filmmakers are still happy to collect tro­phies and support the idiocy.

But things need to change. Our culture of awarding films needs a complete overhaul. The focus must shift from people-pleasing and mon­ey-making to rewarding the truly deserving films and per­formances. In that case, if the organizers make some money on the side, even better.

If film awards want to be taken seriously, they need a more credible foun­dation. This will take time. Mean­while, “Are our films award-wor­thy?” might be a better topic worth exploring o

Comedy

KOHALPUR EXPRESS

CAST: Keki Adhikari, Priyanka Karki, Reecha Sharma, Buddhi Tamang, Rabindra Jha

DIRECTION: Bishal Bhandari

1 and a half stars

Rarely does Nepali mainstream cinema feature women-driven stories. Female characters are typically given the role of eye-candy love interests who operate as third elements wheels in the background, never at the center, while the male leads bask in atten­tion. The industry is dominated by men and only a handful of female filmmakers working today in Nepal really have the power and resources to call the shots. So I was sold the moment I found that Keki Adhikari was donning the producer’s hat and had roped in Priyanka Karki and Reecha Sharma for a women-driven ensemble comedy. This could be a game changer, I thought. Alas, the end result, ‘Kohalpur Express’, bitterly disappoints, scoring low on both humor and entertainment.

Keki Adhikari stars as the titular character Kohalpur Express, the hearing impaired yet the go-to deliv­ery girl in her hometown of Kohal­pur. Whatever she makes by deliv­ering groceries and goods on her electric two-wheeler, she donates to the orphanage she grew up in. One day, she’s called upon by her childhood friend Champa (Pri­yanka Karki). The heavily pregnant Champa has cooked a plan to kidnap a child of a rich Marwadi business­man (Rabindra Jha) with the help of her meek husband (Buddhi Tamang) and two other less-than-capable accomplices (Binod Neupane and Sujan Karki).

But just three days before the kid­napping, her husband falls sick and has to be hospitalized. Since he was the only person in the team who knew how to ride a bike, they need a quick replacement, and who better than Kohalpur Express!

‘Kohalpur Express’ is yet another film where a ragtag team of odd­balls are trying to pull off a kidnap­ping, which, of course, goes awfully wrong. The characters are so poorly thought of, they have no human quality to root for.

Adhikari has the most unassum­ing role. She is too spaced out and restrained to be able to carry the entire film on her shoulders. Pri­yanka Karki, by contrast, gets to be bossy and loudmouth but convinces only in bits and pieces. The rest of the supporting cast don’t stand out either. Even the dependable Buddhi Tamang and Rabindra Jha fail to land any memorable one-liners. But it’s Reecha Sharma’s over-the-top performance which is the last nail in the coffin for a movie that was dead on arrival.

Sharma, an otherwise accom­plished actor, plays a dimwitted bar girl embroiled into a kidnap­ping plot in the movie’s later half. Her exaggerated body gestures, labored breathing and pouty expres­sions made me squirm impatiently in my seat.

Director Bishal Bhandari and writer Shan Basnyat move the story at a snail’s pace and digress way too much in their lukewarm effort at comedy. In an early scene, Buddhi Tamang is sitting in a bhatti (tavern) narrating the plan to his accomplices. To gather their attention, he says, La sun! (‘Listen up!’). In reaction, the tavern owner brings them a plate of garlic, thinking they ordered lasun (‘garlic’). (You want us to laugh at that?) Likewise, there’s a run­ning joke about a character getting bitten by a cow. This gag gets referenced about ten times. The film’s comedy chops are so low I’m afraid they would fail to tickle even five-year-olds.

Even with its talented actors, the journey ‘Kohalpur Express’ takes us on is drab and senseless. This ride is rarely scenic!

Action Adventure
RAMPAGE
CAST:Dwayne Johnson, Naomie Harris, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Malin Akerman
DIRECTION: Brad Peyton

‘Rampage’ is one of those sci-fi action flicks where Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson saves the world from destruction. Here he teams up with his ‘San Andreas’ director, Brad Peyton, to dish out a cinematic mayhem of massive proportion. As a genre piece, the movie is happy to remain in the margins and never comes close to stand apart from the likes of ‘Godzilla’ or ‘King Kong’. Its sole ambition is to let computer-gen­erated imagery (CGI) overtake storytelling. Take it as a guilty plea­sure and you might actually enjoy the well-crafted visual effect spec­tacles, but take it as a serious enter­tainment and you might sit through the movie scratching your head over the film’s unimaginative story and thin characterization. Dwayne Johnson plays Davis Okoye, a former anti-poaching spe­cial force operative, now working at San Diego Wildlife Sanctuary as lead primatologist looking after the reha­bilitation of rescued gorillas. Among the pack, an albino gorilla named George is pals with Davis. We see the two exchange teasing remarks in signs and fist bumping each other. Then through an unfortunate chain of events, George gets exposed to a container that happened to store samples from a doomed experiment at a space lab. Overnight, the expo­sure alters George’s DNA and he grows into a King Kong-sized gorilla with anger issues. Soon he’s wreak­ing havoc in the sanctuary.

George isn’t the only genetically mutated animal. There are others as well—a crocodile and a wolf, for instance. The military wants to shoot them down and the tech com­pany behind the failed experiment wants to capture the animals to recover genetic samples.

In the wake of all this, Davis wants to save his friend George before he goes on a rampage and destroys everything in his way. In his quest, Davis is aided by a genetic scientist (Naomie Harris) and a federal agent (Jeffrey Dean Morgan).

Though flawed, the movie is eas­ily watchable because it doesn’t take itself seriously. The charac­ters are deliberately simpleminded and stripped off any depth. For instance, we never get an inkling of Davis’ social life and he remains a macho from the beginning to the end, without changing much. The writing is so expositional that characters will overstate the obvi­ous. As I pointed out earlier, director Peyton is here to deliver carnage and explosion, not a story that examines the human folly to mess with nature. For him, character development is a distraction and he makes no effort at highbrow art; he’s here to churn mass popular cinematic senti­ments with ‘The Rock’ in it, and he is moderately successful.

Speaking of actors, Dwayne John­son is his usual gung-ho self. His character graph is trite, and the story doesn’t ask for much save for his beefy stature and straight-face. Naomie Harris is given an emotional backstory with a tragedy involving her brother. But the film treats these emotional beats as speed bumps and instead cuts to the well-de­signed action sequences. Jeffrey Dean Morgan of ‘The Walking Dead’ makes his presence felt as the wise­cracking federal agent, who turns blind eye to Davis’ questionable ways to rescue George just because Davis saved his life.

You don’t go to a movie starring ‘The Rock’ expecting it to be an eye-opening cerebral drama. And ‘Rampage’ doesn’t sweat hard to be that kind of film. It is a pure campy mixed-bag of action and carnage with a mechanical plot. One-time viewing only.

Romance
LILY BILY
CAST:
Jassita Gurung, Pradeep Khadka, Priyanka Karki, Anup Bikram Shahi
DIRECTION:
Milan Chams

When ‘Lily Bily’ reached its interval mark, I was the first one to barge out of the hall, in desperate need of fresh air. Not once in my movie-going life had I so strongly wanted the multiplex’s food counter to sell aspirins. I couldn’t walk out right away because I had to review the whole movie, not just the first half. I envied the five chatty teenagers who were seated next to me at the beginning of the movie because they had no such obligation. They quietly disappeared after the inter­val to maybe spend the rest of the day on something more exciting, given it was the Nepali New Year. As for me, I downed a strong cup of coffee to build my immunity for the second half.

With a title like Lily Bily, I think the makers aspired for a kind of romance between two star-crossed lovers, a la Romeo Juliet, Muna Madan or Laila Majnu. But the movie ends up as the romance between two utterly unlik­able and dimwitted protagonists: Shruti aka Lily (Jassita Gurung) and Avash aka Bily (Pradeep Khadka); a better title for the movie would have been Silly Silly.

The entire movie is a long flash­back that Shruti has inside the Jacobite steam train while travel­ing through the Scottish highlands. In this long flashback, there are multiple mini-flashbacks and voice-over monologues that make the movie an exercise in uninspired writing and boring filmmaking. Everyone involved in this movie, from its director Milan Chams to its leads, and to the person who com­posed the film’s background score, seemed clueless.

It starts off as a road trip movie: two people meeting after a long time. It shifts gear when the girl’s angry ex-boyfriend (Anup Bikram Shahi) makes an appear­ance and throws some kicks and punches at the hero. After that the ex-boyfriend vanishes. The story gets muddled when Shruti’s parents come into the picture along with her would-be fiancé (Sabin Shrestha) and whisk her away from Avash. Shruti then goes against the wishes of her family and pursues Avash, only to find that he has another woman in his life.

The plot is really disposable there­after and stops making sense, with subplots involving euthanasia and what not. Milan Chams, from what I’ve read, is a Nepali filmmaker with a strong footing among the NRNs in the UK. The only possible reason for him to make something like Lily Bily was to use his access to shoot a Nepali movie at a foreign location. So he’s attentive only in making good use of his camera while filming the song sequences.

A third of the movie has people either walking away from each other or running towards each other. And Chams feasts on these moments by shooting them in ultra-slow motion.

Pradeep Khadka, fresh out of Prem Geet, is bereft of any charisma. He’s paired with newcomer Jassita Gurung. Both act cutesy and funny but they are in fact childish puppy lovers, who indulge in banal conversation and fail to give us one memorable dialogue. They play protagonists in an Idiot Plot (a term coined by late film critic Roger Ebert), where the big misunderstanding could have been easily resolved if one character stepped up and spoke with clarity.

I went to the theater expecting Lily Bily to be a feel-good romance. I came out watching a feature length tourism video on Scotland.

Black Comedy

BLACKMAIL

CAST: Irrfan Khan, Kirti Kulhari, Arunoday Singh, Omi Vaidya, Pradhuman Singh, Divya Dutta

DIRECTION: AbhinayDeo.

Black comedies with their cross-cutting plot lines and humor derived from character desperation can be tricky to crack. Done well, this is the genre that leaves lasting impression. Think about Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Pulp Fic­tion’ or The Coen Brothers’ ‘Fargo’ and ‘The Big Lebowski’.These movies find their way into­every film buff’s canon of modern classics. Given the seductiveness of this style of filmmaking, it has attracted its share of copycats who have dirtied the pool with their for­mulaic and revisionist approach. So whenever a multiple protago­nist comedy with a crime at its cen­ter hits the screen, people invari­ably say, “It’s like Tarantino!”But even Tarantino and Coen Brothers haven’t been spared by detractors, as they have been accused of ripping off their earlier works in their lesser known offerings.

Abhinay Deo, the director of 2011’s much-loved black comedy ‘Delhi Belly’, has just released his new film, ‘Blackmail’. So does Deo play his old riffs or perform a new tune? I’m pleased to say that he finds a delicate balance. ‘Blackmail’in places reeks of ‘Delhi Belly’ but still manages to score a mean punch thanks to Irrfan Khan’s wide-eyed and effective deadpan central performance.

Dev (Irrfan Khan) is a toilet paper sales executive stuck in a thankless job and a loveless arranged marriage with wife Reena (Kirti Kulhari). He would rather spend time playing PacMan till late hours in office than go home to his wife. One day, egged by his office colleague (Pradhuman Singh), Dev decides to surprise her by going home early. But when he gets home, he’s the one getting the surprise. As he peeps into their bed­room, he spots Reena in bed with another lover (Arunoday Singh).

What does a heart broken Dev do?

He’s a meek sales executive, so Jack Lemmon-like in ‘The Apart­ment’ that his character, if he walks into a room where his wife’s canoo­dling her lover, he would rather apologize and excuse himself than violently confront them. So Dev runs away quietly.

But as he is under a pile of debt, he makes up his mind to use this new found information about his wife’s affair and in a stroke of weird genius decides to extort money from the lover by blackmailing him. But his action backfires. Without spoil­ing the movie, I can just hint that what starts off as a harmless black­mail scheme instigates a chain of events that circles back to Dev and he finds himself getting blackmailed in the end.

What works well in ‘Blackmail’ are the moments where Dev needs to come out of his repressed existence and improvise to escape from sticky scenarios. There’s a point where he flees a crime scene and to make himself unrecognizable strips down to his boxers and covers his face with a lingerie brand’s shopping bag. Irrfan Khan shines in the film’s fish-out-of-water scenes and he does so by keeping a straight face, thus escalating the humor.

His nuanced acting is matched by Arunoday Singh, who plays the dim­witted body-builder lover of Dev’s wife. This lover in turn is married to an alcoholic and ball-busting rich lady (Divya Dutta). Similarly, Omi Vaidya makes a comeback after a short hiatus from Hindi films as Dev’s boss who wants to teach Indi­ans to save water by wiping their bottoms with his toilet paper. In a standout scene, Vaidya’s charac­ter announces a war against jet-sprays which he deems his product’s toughest competitor.

But director Deo’s eagerness to make Khan’s character emotionless definitely weighs on the movie’s length. The film’s runtime is 2 hours 19 minutes(nearly 30 minutes longer than the runtime of ‘Delhi Belly’) and much of the middle part is spent treading water. So it is a little slow, you could say.

But ‘Blackmail’ deserves a view­ing for its quirky sensibilities and colorful characters. I don’t think it will have the same recall value as ‘Delhi Belly’.Nonetheless this black comedy scores high on originality and twisted humor.

3 stars ***

In all these movies, the makers deliver on the promise of the prem­ise. They play on characters’ para­noia and keep peeling off the murky layers towards the big reveal at the end. But Baaghi 2 delivers paranoia of a different kind. The kind that assaults audience with excruciat­ingly high-strung action sequences synced to earsplitting background scores. These tactics of director Ahmed Khan are clearly overdone.

The plot: Military man Ranvir Pratap Singh aka Ronnie (Tiger Shroff), who is serving at the Kash­mir border, gets a call from his for­mer lover Riya (Disha Patani) out of the blue. Riya sounds distressed and wants Ronnie’s help. She doesn’t get into specifics but this is enough for Ronnie to take a one week leave from his base and travel all the way to Goa to meet her. There, Riya reveals to Ronnie the kidnapping of her daughter two months ago. She has exhausted all options and the police are to shut the case for lack of leads. Now it’s up to Ronnie to help Riya find her daughter.

Choreographer-turned-director Ahmed Khan is least bothered in taming Tiger Shroff, so he lets him loose. Shroff is given every possi­ble opportunity to showcase his dance moves and combat skills. It would then be redundant to point out that the story is driven not by its protagonist but according to the convenience of its star. Shroff is an ideal action star and above all this is an action thriller. He looks intensely charged up in action sequences and one can only imagine the hours it took to choreograph and shoot them with precision.

Pushing the central story in the backseat in favor of spectac­ular stunts makes the movie lose its urgency and purpose. Going back and forth to show the back­story of Ronnie and Riya’s doomed romance, and loaded with unnec­essary fight sequences and dance numbers, the actual investigative element of the story gets a short shift. When it dawns that they’ve wasted big chunk of screentime without moving the plot, Ahmed Khan and his writers all-too-con­veniently drop clues right in front of Ronnie that he can tail. I was left thinking: why didn’t they make Shroff’s character a shrewd investi­gator rather than a killing machine? That would have been a more fitting characterization.

As Shroff enjoys center-stage, seasoned actors like Manoj Bajpayee, Randeep Hooda and Deepak Dobriyal make do with whatever little elbow room they get. Hooda in particular has a few good scenes where he keeps the tone of the movie light and playful. And it’s great to see Prateik Babbar return to acting after his trouble with drug addiction. Ironically, though, he plays a coke addict.

Whatever substance Baaghi 2 misses, it tries to cover up with elaborate action scenes. A refresh­ing spin on the traditional action hero template would have given us a better movie. But at two hours and twenty-five minutes, the final product feels overstretched and endlessly boring for a straightfor­ward action thriller.

Two stars

 Comedy

SATRU GATE

CAST: Madan Krishna Shrestha, Hari Bansha Acharya, Deepak Raj Giri, Deepa Shree Niraula, Paul Shah, Anchal Sharma, Priyanka Karki

DIRECTION: Pradip Bhattarai

 Next-door neighbors Suraj (Paul Shah) and Sandhya (Anchal Sharma) are lovers and are destined to get hitched soon. The two families are preparing for the wedding but Suraj’s father (Hari Bansha Acharya) is still apprehen­sive about getting his son married to the daughter of his sworn enemy, a corrupt politician played by Ramesh Ranjan. He tries to reason with his wife (Deepashree Niraula) and son to back out. But what is a loving father to do when his son’s adamant to marry the girl of his choice? The opening 15 minutes of ‘Satru Gate’ set it up as a regular ‘slice of life’ centered on a big, fat Nepali wedding. But hang on! Director Pradip Bhattarai and his co-writer Deepak Raj Giri aren’t here to offer you a sober family entertainer. Their aim is rather to stretch the comedy to the extreme and push the story forcefully to a chaotic route. They model their film as a South Indian masala entertainer, piling it with multiple sub-plots driven by illogical twists every 15 minutes or so.

The movie moves at lightning speed. In this family mix, out of nowhere, a tantric baba is thrown in. He demands Suraj and Sandhya’s matrimony be stopped as their alli­ance will anger the holy spirits. Then a troublemaker Rahul (Deepak Raj Giri) moves into the neighborhood. He happens to be a YouTube vlog­ger who upsets the neighborhood’s harmony by spying on his neighbors to create sensational content for his YouTube channel.

One of his stunts goes too far, jeop­ardizing Suraj and Sandhya’s wed­ding and creating a feud between their families. After that Satru Gate shows no trace of being a wedding movie and ventures into a battle of wits between the characters of Hari Bansha Acharya character and Deepak Raj Giri. A few more eye-roll inducing plot twists later, the film shifts from Kathmandu to Tarai where Sandhya’s made to marry someone else while Suraj and his father decide to crash her wedding to rescue her. But until that point, keeping track of the story becomes a tedious chore.

Heavyweight comedians Acharya and Giri disappoint as they rarely come out of their comfort zone. Acharya does what he does best, playing a clownish man-child. He approaches this role by only slightly twisting his Hari Bahadur character that he has immortalized over the years. Similarly, Giri swaggers back to the cool-dude baddie he played in both installments of ‘Chakka Panja’. The two overshadow the youngsters Paul Shah and Anchal Sharma. It feels like the two are doing extended cameos in a movie that begins with them as protagonists.

This is director Bhattarai’s follow up to 2016’s ‘Jatra’. While he was successful in weaving together three distinct characters to blend a coher­ent story in ‘Jatra’, he’s weighed down by the massive cast and nev­er-ending sub-plots in Satru Gate. He flips from one scene to another as if he is a guide who wants to give his audience the tour of the entire world in just two hours. This is mentally draining on the audience.

Laughs in the movie mostly come from cheap digs at some­one’s appearance or misogynistic one-liners. It is ironic that after all the randomness and lapse of logic, the movie wants to ends as a socially aware work celebrating Nepal’s cul­tural diversity.

Satru Gate was not made with the audience’s intelligence in mind. It was made solely as a vanity proj­ect for Hari Bansha Acharya and Deepak Raj Giri to shoehorn their old-school comic sensibilities into a money-spinning masala movie.

2 stars **