Padman
U/A: Drama, Biography
Director: R Balki
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Radhika Apte, Sonam Kapoor
Rating: 

So yeah, it's that time of the month, when this film on periods, having had to skip its release for another kind of period drama (Padmaavat), finally makes it to theatres. And let this be the last of the puns I'll make on the film's subject. As if attempting a semi-rural setting isn't risky enough, one of the things the thoroughly massy filmmakers might have feared while making this pic, I suspect, are sniggers from a (predominantly) male audience, especially with the lead actor - in separate phases, a macho, mainstream action, comic, romantic star - being perceived as a chump on screen, obsessed with women chumming.

Akshay Kumar plays one Lakshmikant Chauhan, an uneducated, intuitive innovator of sorts (one wished to see more of his 'jugaad' inventions), from Maheshwar - a gorgeous riverside settlement, with the 18th Century Queen Ahilyabai Holkar's minimalist palace overlooking the Narmada, which I think you must visit, if ever around Indore sometime. The location is used well to prettify the frame here, although one hardly gets a sense of its people, and the patois.