Sari Marathi Movie Review: Heartrendingly Melodramatic!

SARI (Marathi)

Directors: K.S. Ashoka and Vishal Asha Patil

Cast: Ajinkya Raut, Ritika Shrotri, Mrinal Kulkarni, Prithvi Ambar, Pankaj Vishnu and Sanjay Khapre

Platform of Release: Theatrical

Rating:

By Jyothi Venkatesh

Sari, starring Ajinkya Raut, Ritika Shrotri and Pruthvi Ambaar, is a frame-to-frame xerox copy of the Kannada film Dia with no changes in the basic structure, from story, screenplay, dialogue, or even the background score.  Dia is a critically acclaimed and commercially successful romantic tragedy from Kannada Cinema.  Sari is the story of a young, introverted girl Dia (Ritika Shrotri) who falls for one of her classmates, Rohit (Ajinkya Raut) and their destiny is fraught with unexpected surprises.

Sari has its own highs and lows and from the first till the last frame, and is a heart-breaking film, with a different climax. The film, which halfway through teaches you about living life by forgetting pain, actually ends up forgetting its own motto. That’s one of the major shortcomings among a dozen of them, though the debut making director has ensured that there are a lot of surprising twists and turns in the film.

It is not very often that a film is being remade from the original Kannada language into Marathi and that too by the same director and Sari is an exception to the rule. What redeems the otherwise melodramatic film to a very large extent is the electrifying role played by Ritika Shrotri in the title role of Dia. From the time she had played the chirpy and effervescent role in her sleazy film Takatak three years back, I should say that Ritika has transformed into a mature actress.

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As far as the performance of the main cast goes, while Ajinkya Raut is good, unfortunately he does not have a role which is enough to showcase his latent talent while Prithvi Ambaar who is well known for Kannada and Tulu movies ‘Dia’, ‘Bairagee’, ‘Aba Jaba Daba’ and others, has made a formidable debut in Marathi cinema with Sari. Prithvi Ambar endears himself to the hearts of the viewers with his sincere and calm performance as the only doting son of Mrinal Kulkarni, who does a sterling performance.

Both Pankaj Vishnu and Sanjay Khapre, who are otherwise powerhouse performers in the Marathi film industry for several years, have been wasted in inane roles in the film. Music by Amit Raj, Arijit Chakraborty and B. Ajaneesh Loknath is exemplary.