Laxmii is a Hindi-language comedy horror film written and directed by Raghava Lawrence in his first Bollywood directorial. It is a remake of his own 2011 Tamil film Kanchana starring Akshay Kumar and Kiara Advani, Ayesha Raza Mishra, Rajesh Sharma, Ashwini Kalsekar and Sharad Kelkar in the lead roles. It is the first big budget Indian film which was streamed digitally on Disney+ Hotstar on 9 November 2020. The movie was projected at the theatres in United Arab Emirates, Australia and New Zealand though it It was not released in India due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The film revolves around a man who gets possessed by the ghost of a transgender. If you watched the original, then don’t make the silly mistake of watching Laxmii, a total headache. The writing is awful and boring. Over the top acting, cringe dialogues and unfunny situations make the flick skippable. It also stated that it has horror element but unfortunately it doesn’t scare us. Due to the weak screenplay, the direction is also not up to the mark.
Though the last 40 minutes (where we get introduced to the character of Sharad Kelkar) is a bit entertaining but rest 1hr 40 minutes is totally unbearable. The cinematography is impressive and execution standard of the songs is high. Unwanted tracks, characters and punch lines are the drawbacks of the film. The only good thing about it is that the movie has shed light on the lives of transgender people and the hardships they face just because they’re biologically different. It tries to convince people that such people are equally talented and can do wondrous things if they’re given the same opportunities as others.
At last, I would like to say that is a total waste of time and disrespectful to the original. If it had been remade 6 -7 years ago, it might have been a good entertainer. But, in 2020, it is hard for the audience to accept low-quality execution which is fully outdated and cringe-worthy. The critics as well as the public slammed the movie and received a rating of 2.2/10 on IMDb. My rating is 2/10.
