Laalo – Krishna Sada Sahaayate review: Magically Soul Healing

Laalo – Krishna Sada Sahaayate review: Magically Soul Healing

‘Laalo – Krishna Sada Sahaayate’ – After a long time, comes a mainstream cinema that promises to stays with you forever in its sheer capacity to enlighten, entertain, motivate and asks you to never give up. All these brilliantly interwoven in a one film that is simple and yet an extraordinary piece of cinema which serves as a strikingly shining combo of a prison-escape drama (jail break), a survival story, a unique story of brotherhood, a tribute to the religiously based mythological’s of yore like ‘Jai Santoshi Maa’ Yeh Hai Zindagi’ were God appears and educates/reforms the protagonist to the recent OMG series but with a difference. While the above-mentioned films in its seed of thought are often laced with a social comment, director Ankit Sakhiya’s ‘Laalo – Krishna Sada Sahaayate’ stands different for its pure spiritual and healing nature and human touch that makes it a cinema that can be savored.

‘Laalo – Krishna Sada Sahaayate’ plot line

A smartly woven invitation for believers and non-believers written primarily for the target mainstream audience. ‘Laalo – Krishna Sada Sahaayate’ is a story of a rickshaw driver in Junagadh Gujarat Laalo (Karan Joshi) who has gone missing after a quarrel with his wife Tulsi (Reeva Rachh) a homemaker.

The movie begins with Tulsi filing a complaint at a local police station about the missing of her husband. Things are not at all good between Laalo and Tulsi. Laalo a autorickshaw driver and is also quite handy as a tourist guide who takes his passengers tourist to notable known places near Junagadh famous for their association with Gujarat’s spiritual and cultural heritage sites like Bhavnath, Girnar, Damodar Kund, Narsinh Mehta no Choro etc.

Laalo is under huge debts and to make matters worse, Laloo is losing control over his alcohol addiction and is unable to make ends meet at home while the money lenders have started threatening him with dire consequences. Where is Laalo?. What happened to him? what happened that night? The movie answers all the questions.

Laalo – Krishna Sada Sahaayate movie review

After reading the above plotline, people may wonder what so special here to make a reported fifty core budget Guajarati movie a phenomenal ‘Dhurandhar’ of its region registering a mind-blowing one hundred and fifty core budget all time biggest Guajarati blockbuster till date?.

‘Believe’ me, ‘Laalo – Krishna Sada Sahaayate’ is undeniably special cinema whether you believe in God/idol worship or not.

Kudos to the writers Krushansh Vaja, Vicky Poornima and the director himself Ankit Sakhiya who has brought the believers and non-believers together in one platform through this film – Umesh Shukla’s OMG part 1 in the end scummed in its stand and made Paresh Rawal a sort of a believer, Amit Rai in his follow up of OMG 2 made a smart move and made the protagonist a believer but the believer with an open mind and more sensibility plus the core issue that concerns each and every teenager was brought upon remarkably well that reached its audience.

Ankit Sakhiya’s ‘Laalo – Krishna Sada Sahaayate’ never claimed to question the system and was not at keen in highlighting a pertinent issue prevailing in the society, it’s a story of small-town households in India everywhere and Junagadh is a metaphor here in my believe. A common rickshaw wala in a dry state which is spiritually and culturally rich and has a humongous following of Lord Krishna brings the message of courage, faith in yourself, the power of love and divine virtues of good deeds resulting in magic on your life is not a mean task.

Laalo who has gone missing is a victim of his own greed, he enters the farm house easily following the passenger carrying that bag full of currency notes and gets ‘trapped’. He cannot get out from the farm house now. Like Vikramaditya Motwane’s terrific ‘Trapped’ starring the amazing Rajkummar Rao, Laalo over here has to survive in a place with almost nothing in the farm house. A television running a pravachan on never giving up, the cycle of karma, and Laalo is desperately trying to sip the last drop of water from a tap, crush ice from refrigerator to satisfy some of his thirst, pieces of peanuts to eat and point a magnifying glass at the sun in order to light his beedi. Tired, frustrated and devastated, Laloo has nothing but to curse his fate and scream for help but who is listening.

Now, like a prison escape/jail break drama Laalo has to break his way out. ‘Laalo’ gets help from his recent passenger tourist also named ‘Laalo’ played by Shruhad Goswami.

Director Ankit Sakhiya gets back to his romantic Guajarati web series lead actor Shruhad Goswami for role of the charming tourist ‘Laloo’, now call the tourist ‘Laloo’ Lord Krishna or the rickshaw wala ‘Laloo’ ‘s awakening of inner conscience based around his experiences and memories resulting in breaking his self-created shackles around him and coming out free as a reborn human being.

From the rom com to a cinema that is savoring and has the power to resonates in its spiritual, philosophical, divine and human power, Ankit Sakhiya has come a long way. In a life where we get tested from time to time, faith restores you and asks you to continue pushing with all the strength and vigor that keeps generating hope.

The presentation by Ankit Sakhiya is very simple and basic but amazingly strikable making the desried impact right from the word go. The performance by Karan Joshi as Lalji Dhansukh Parmar "Laalo", Reeva Rachh as Tulsi and Shruhad Goswami as Laalo/Lord Krishna are very natural and effective.

The subplot of the missing idols is not properly developed and is a drawback. But the bonding between Karan Joshi as Lalji Dhansukh Parmar "Laalo" and Shruhad Goswami as Laalo/Lord Krishna is pure gold reminding of the divine bond between Lord Krishna and his friend Sudama.