On paper, the idea of playing the busybody housewife Rajeshwari in Toh Baat Pakki, who seems to have only one mission in life, namely to see her sister (newcomer Yuvika) married off, must have sounded like an exciting new character to explore for the brilliant actress. Alas, Tabu had not bargained for the mundane situations and the pedestrian dialogues that her character is put into.
Toh Baat Pakki is one of those tragic comedies that don’t elicit a hint of humour. If Basu Chatterjee lost the plot, he would probably have turned up with this listless ode to the middle-of-the-road movies of the 1970s.
This middle-of-the-roader gets stranded in the middle of nowhere. The plot is intrinsically bereft of ingenuity. The direction is plodding and strained most of the way.
Tabu plays the interesting-on-paper dreadful-in-execution housewife as part-schemer, part-dreamer but entirely annoying and avoidable. Unlike the shrew that Sridevi played with full-blooded passion in Judaai, Tabu’s Rajeshwari is a woman caught in annoying confusions of self-assertion. And she’s not to blame. What do you do with a narration that has been shot on the sets erected in Ooty for Raj Kumar Santoshi’s Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani?
Among the many problems that plague the plot is the lack of inherent drama in Tabu’s character. Her character has no inner life and no motivating emotions except hatching silly match-making schemes for her giddy-headed sister to tie the knot. She first invites Sharman into her home as a tenant. Then Vatsal. Before a third tenant gets the suitor’s suite, we make a quick exit out of the theatre.
The lingering condition of a hangover mixed with yesterday’s leftovers stays with the film right till the bustling conclusion when all of Rajeshwari’s match-making manipulation comes to fatuous fruition.Toh Baat Pakki tries hard to be charming and quaint. It lacks that lightness of weight that would have made the characters appear larger than life in an unstrained, unstained atmosphere.
Tabu tries bravely to get out of her dramatic space to deliver a broad satirical performance that screams for behind-the-scenes fine-tuning. She gets no support from her co-stars except maybe Ayub Khan, who, as her supportive husband, plays a thankless part with warmth. Sharman Joshi, as Tabu’s sister’s first suitor, has done the goofy act lately in 3 Idiots. Here, he has nothing new or appealing to add to his uninspired character.
Vatsal Seth, as suitor no.2, gives his clean-cut good-boy role a genial treatment. The second -half, when Sharman, pretending to be the bride-to-be’s well-wisher, tries to influence Vatsal against the marital alliance, is suspiciously similar to Yash Chopra’s Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hai.
That at least had some derivative energy to sustain its silly romantic movement. Toh Baat Pakki is as inert at its centre as a clock that stopped ticking while you were sleeping.
Avoid, even if you are a diehard Tabu fan. In fact, please avoid IF you are a Tabu fan.
