When a writer thinks of a story, he/she goes through three stages of development. The first is where the plot is thought of, that is the story on a whole. Here, there are only the protagonists and a few other key characters that come to the writer’s mind.
Then begins the second phase where the story is thought of or written down in detail. How many characters to introduce in the story, how to shape it to make it interesting, whether it should be a comedy, tragedy, or a period drama, so on and so forth. But when it comes to the script, one has to speak about the characters, their chracteristics, events that would change these characters’ lives, write dialogues, the start and the end of the story. And then break down the story in scenes. In simple words, a story becomes a ready-to-deliver baby when it becomes a script. On the other hand, we can call the plot an idea which is yet to start taking form.
Many stories, when they are in the plot or story stage, sound excellent. Honestly, most stories are good at this stage. But when the time comes to give it a shape or put it in a desired mould, many writers fail to impress. The same has happened with Kanjoos Makhichoos.
Let’s have a look at the plot before we move forward just to explain you the above point better:
Kanjoos Makhichoos Movie Plot
Jamnadas Pandey is saving money to send his parents on Char Dhaam Yatra. As his parents and wife do not know about his savings, they look at him as an annoying miser who doesn’t want to spend a penny in life – not on food, not on his kid’s education, not on new clothes, etc. But when he saves enough to turn his parents’ dream into reality, he sends them on the yatra.
While the parents are enjoying their trip, the family gets to know about a natural calamity that has hit Uttarakhand. After one phone call, the family fails to reconnect with the aged parents. Jamnadas Pandey then travels to Uttarakhand himself to look for his missing parents only to come back home disappointed. He still doesn’t give up and keeps visiting government offices and officials to enquire about his parents.
When the officials come to know that it’s been over 25 days that the couple is missing, they tell Jamnadas to consider them dead and accept a compensation of 14 lakhs. After much introspection, Jamnadas accepts the possibility that his parents might have indeed died in the calamity and accepts the compensation. But the official offers him only 10 lakhs in person while on-paper, the compensation still remains 14 lakhs.
Jamnadas, without arguing with the officials, takes whatever money he gets and uses it to fulfil all his parents’ wishes. As time passes, Jamnadas’ parents come back, hale and hearty and alive.
Now, the money is used. Jamnadas should now either return 14 lakhs to the government (where he had received only 10 lakhs) or hide his parents by declaring them dead forever. But for how long can he fake their death when they are living in the same house?
A moral battle then begins for Jamnadas Pandey.
What Went Wrong?
The story gets predictable in the end. It becomes a battle of right and wrong. We all know that when it comes to fighting with the powerful, a common man cannot win the battle. At least not in the way Jamnadas wins in the film.
The story could have easily taken an intellectual yet funny twist, if it would have decided to not suddenly become preachy towards the end. A twist where Jamnadas traps the government officials could have easily given a “money” twist since the story revolves around a miser.
It would have been interesting to watch how Jamnadas makes the official pay him 14 lakhs, then uses this money to return the compensation to the government by declaring his parents “not dead.”
If I had to review Kanjoos Makhichoos in one line, I would say:
The plot is impressive, the story had the potential but a bad script killed a good film.
The Digital Popcorn 