Sanjoy (Parambrato Chatterjee), one of the crazy four, a journalist who kicked his job in search of something more fulfilling, is the narrator who keeps moving back and forth in time as the camera switches into the future and back. Ashim (Saswata Chatterjee) is a doctor who is willing to try everything but medicine as a way of life. Shekhar (Ritwik Chakrabarty) has a short fuse, is the son of a rich man, has walked out of his father’s house and is busier with horses and bookies than with helping Ashim. Hari (Rudraneel Ghosh), a failure, has made a habit of falling in love and getting ditched, often because he does not know English. But he is a gifted singer and the ditched hitchhiker Riya/Keya (Aparajita Ghosh-Das), enchanted by his songs, falls for him hook, line and sinker, burying her ditching woes forever.
The tour members are no less eccentric. There is the henpecked husband (Kaushik Ganguly) who tries to please everyone including his nagging wife (Bidipta Chakrabarty) but mostly fails. The chemistry professor Dhurjoti (Barun Chanda) reads porn glossies covered with brown paper and calls it his chemistry ‘thesis.’ Miss Gombhir (Churni Ganguly) is a writer of murder mysteries under an assumed name who tries to veil her personal tragedy with attitude. ‘Baby’ Rudra (Sujon Mukherjee) is the grumpy, cribbing bird-watcher who suddenly decides to join the tour guides in their first and last effort at establishing a travel agency.
Technical Expertise
The characters are well fleshed-out and charming for breaking the stereotype, for their sheer unpredictability and for their brilliant acting worked down to the tiniest detail and the finest nuances. Every character is an extended cameo in keeping with the collage-like structure and character of the film, redefining the evolving, hybrid, global identity of the contemporary Bengali. The best thing about Chalo Lets Go is the humour structured into the characters with intelligent asides and rip-roaring fun that entertains without demeaning the characters or making the viewer lose respect for the film. It is entertainment punched with wonderful fusion music by Neel Dutt, specially the Ei path jodi naa shesh hoire mix of an old hit from Suchitra-Uttam’s Saptapadi. Indranil Mukherjee’s cinematography is mesmerising.
The script, that teaches you to laugh at yourself, tends to lose control at places like in the antakshari that fails to jell with the story or with the characters. At times, Dutta just skims the surface where he could have gone deeper into the characters. The test of a very good film is when you carry it with you outside the theatre long after the credits come up. Chalo Let’s Go does not pass this test.
Verdict
Yet, it deserves one star for the story and direction, one for the acting and one for its music. Keep it up, Anjan.