Review of movie The Dark Side Of Life: Mumbai City

×

Rating:2/5

Seven individual lives, all intertwined in ways more than one, are grasped in the clutches of life’s inexorable difficulties that ultimately pushes them over the fence, prompting almost all the characters – Anand (Nikhil Ratnaparkhi), Parul (Jyoti Malshe), Kavya (Neha Khan), Warren Lobo (Deep Raj Rana),Sumit Balsaria (Kay Kay Menon), Zulfiqar Hussain (Mahesh Bhatt), Prince (Avii) – to succumb to the blows of depression.

‘The Dark Side of Life: Mumbai City’ is an attempt to portray the shadowy side of a big city like Mumbai and how, in order to blend in with the crowd and live up to their sky-high expectations, people make irreversible mistakes before the realisation sets in that life in a concrete jungle is not as rosy as it seems.

The incidents shown in this slice-of-life flick, which are supposedly grim and a reflection of how life looks like, does not resonate with the audience whatsoever. Coupled with a lacklustre script, is some bad acting and shoddy cinematography. Mahesh Bhatt, who plays the role of a pining father, is quite the natural in front of the camera. Kay Kay Menon, despite a weak story in hand, renders a performance that one would expect from a seasoned actor like him. Rest of the cast was pretty bland and failed to evoke any sense of grief or pity for the stories they are a part of and the characters they essay on screen.

‘The Dark Side of Life: Mumbai City’ has many enemies that kill its honest attempt towards highlighting the alarming issue of depression and suicide, and the length of it is one of them. The reiterating theme song in the film, Aawargi, is used as and when pleased, which is a big downer. And, the treatment of the sub-plots fail to justify each character’sdecision to end their lives and the subsequent change of heart, especially because their grief doesn’t translate into the screen the way it should have.