Stick, no carrot

The only pull factor of Sadhu Babar Lathi is that it’s a Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay story. That did draw some children to the Friday evening show at Nandan 2, but 20 minutes into the film some got busy discussing homework in hush-hush tones while others just dozed off.

Five reasons why you should think twice before wasting two hours and 40 minutes on Sadhu Babar Lathi:

1) Every aspect of Sadhu Babar Lathi — be it the direction, performances, camerawork or editing — is horribly amateurish. The scenes just drag on.

2) Shirshendu’s story is about village simpleton Nabin who inherits a magical bamboo stick from his father. A band of dacoits plans to steal his stick and Rs 30,000 that he is carrying. But the film miserably fails in building up the drama. Director Sanhita Bandopadhyay spoils the fun and adventure typical of a Shirshendu tale.

3) The characters are not fleshed out and the actors are often over the top. Sadhu Babar Lathi is a case in point of bad casting.

4) The night sequences are too dark to even figure out what’s going on.

5) The subplot on Nabin’s friends, Jagai and Madhai, is meaningless. The two are haunted by ghosts that are anything but scary. Jagai-Madhai sing some bad songs (sadly, they are composed by Antara Chowdhury) and break into a jig every two minutes.