Badnaam Gali is a good story and a great concept fallen prey to weak direction. The story had the potential to become everyone’s favourite ‘feel-good’ love story but unfortunately, it couldn’t. Sprinkled with humour, this short film talks about one of the most sensitive and trending topics (all thanks to the celebrities), ‘Surrogacy.’
Patralekha, who is looking super cute in this Zee5 film, is playing the role of a surrogate mother who is being constantly judged by the colony members who are nothing but a sample group representing our hypocritical society. While Divyendu Sharma is playing the character, Randeep Signh Sodhi, her neighbor who initially maintains a safe distance from her, as she is looked down upon for being a single woman who is pregnant. But as the duo become friends and he realizes that she is a surrogate mother and not a single woman who is pregnant without knowing who the child’s father is.
It is a simple and one of the cutest love stories I have come across in the recent times. Then what went wrong? The story wasn’t given its time to flourish. Everything was too quick. If appropriate time would have taken by the director and given to the characters to develop a strong bond between them, this could have been a love story that we had till now only read in the novels but had not seen on the screens yet.
The way both Nayan and Randeep become restless after hearing about the yet to be born baby’s condition and the way Randeep breaks down for the child that does not belong to him, and feels protective yet respectful towards Patralekha’s character are the emotions that should have given more importance to. As the story progresses, the viewers should have already felt this deep and strong connection being established between these three characters – Nayan, Randeep, and the yet to be born baby. Their connection was simply ‘scene-to-scene.’ It looked like a ‘story on paper’ turned into a ‘story of visuals.’ It lacked emotions and the feeling of falling in love. It was an extra-ordinary story turned into an ordinary movie.
Where to Watch? Zee5
The Digital Popcorn 