Menstrual hygiene wasn't introduced in India until later in the 21st century, a social activist from South India introduces a tool to prevent from menstrual bleeding. So basically this film focuses on the aspect of menstrual hygiene in India.
So a welder named Lakshmikant Chauhan based in a village in the rural of East India gets married and lives a blissful life until he notices the women in his village are suffering periods even in his family. Due to the lack of affordability for those sanitary pads, Lakshmi decides to change that by producing napkin pads but his idea leaves the villagers in doubt and gives them the feeling of embarrassment and shame. How Lakshmi changes that is basically what this film is about?
Superman, Batman, Spiderman, and now Padman. R. Balki introudces a very straight on point script with deals with subjective matters of menstrual hygiene. This kind of hygiene is very essential for women across India which does have a very high poverty rate. Balki successfully shows the empowering factors of sanitary pads in such a way that managed to keep the audience engaged throughout those 140 minutes of the film.
As far as performances go, Akshay Kumar literally nails it as Lakshmi. Luckily since Airlift, he has been upping his game especially in this film. His motives on menstrual hygiene was simply outstanding and that village mentality of a dropout as surprisngly something only Kumar can pull.
Radhika Apte plays Gayatri, Lakshmi's wife who is against her husband's decision. She was great and simple but some dialgoues implemented by her were a bit off and it didn't comply too much to her character even as a villager.
Sonam Kapoor was outstanding in Neerja but this film, it gave the audience the feeling especially me that she went on set just to earn a big quick big.
Big B's appearance was quite a surprise.
Direction was quite weak and this is something very common in R.Balki's films. He is very known for adding too mnay close up shots in 80% of the scenes and zooming too much will just cover up the background.
Also there was a minor issue, it is okay to put comedy and drama which were both there but the script itself was a bit too factual. it is understandable that menstrual hygiene is a concept but putting too many of those elements will probably escalate the boredom in some scenes.
Amit Trivedi's album is surely a winner and Mika Singh's take on the title song is simply a treat to devour for the next 4 minutes and Aaj Se Teri sung by Arijit Singh will put you in a romantic mood.
Overall, 2018 is improving quite well at the start and this film will be counted in my top 10 best films of 2018. Nicely written backed up by a narrative concept also backed by powerful performances. But the direction of the film does dissappoint quite alot with the close ups but this is a perfect film.
3.75/5 - R. Balki's most perfect film after Paa
