Thai Massage

The title is somewhat misleading as the Bangkok "massage" know as Yum-Yum and Boom-Boom can be seen more in-depth on Y/T with lots more explicate scenes. A 70 year old widower, who has never travelled beyond his native village, all of a sudden realizes he is Old" and wants to have sex, just one more time. He tells some relatives who either "judge" him or ridicule him in a cruel was, behind his back. He gets brave and travels to Bangkok Thailand in search of a sex partner. First he gets tricked in to just seeing a stage play. Then hires a hooker but falls asleep while she is showering which prompts her to just leave without any "action" taking palace. He then meets a beautiful Russian girl who is travelling around, just SEEING the world. Realizing that he hasn't really LIVED, he decides to join her in her travels. Now he is starting to really live and enjoy the time he still has on earth. Aside from the happy ending, the rest of the movie is all about ridicule and extreme "judgement" by his entire family. The sooner he gets away from all of them the better. The loneliness of being single in old age is explored throughout the movie. I didn't find much to laugh at but I suspect is was made as a comedy for Indian audiences.

An eye opening story for the children, who thinks that their parents can not do or even capable of doing any bad or sinister thing in life and put them on a very high pedal where they forget, their parents are human before becoming your parents and they also have humanly desires and wishes and their bucket of regret. This is the movie that shows us how to express our feeling and open ourselves to the life and understand what it is offering. We in our daily life and routine, forget to enjoy it but we have to cease every moment with joy and when our loved ones die we forget to cherish it. This movie is a very good reminder.

The storyline of this movie reminded me of the movie " Good luck to you Leo Grande " which I watched last year in which a 60 plus lady hires a young gigolo to experience orgasm after many long years. Here we have a lonely, naive, confused 70 year old widower ( Gajraj Rao) from an orthodox town Ujjain who is troubled by his depleted libido. He has a problem of erectile dysfunction and is desperately seeking solutions. A clever young guy ( Divyendu Sharma ) takes advantage of the situation feigning sympathy, gets him treated by a local quack and packs him off to Thailand for fulfillment of his carnal desires through the popular "boom boom" process there.

Director Mangesh Hadawale gives a simplistic treatment to the story and the narrative stumbles along in a slow pace. It does get boring at places but recovers soon. A better storyline was required to make it gripping. The comedy scenes don't actually work and Rajpal Yadav in a comic role could not do much to salvage the situation. It is basically a serious movie and Gajraj Rao does well as usual. He faithfully projects the loneliness and confusion of the character of the widower. A number of seniors of that age group may find his bumbling, shuffling and lurching behavior relatable. In a not so well written role Divyendu Sharma is passable as the crafty young man who takes advantage of the simplicity of Gajraj Rao. A Russian actress Alina Zarobina has given a nice performance. There are some attractive visuals of the sights in Thailand and some more similar scenes would have made the movie still better.

Second half of the movie was much better. I feel first half could have been made better. Rather than using fear of erectile dysfunction, they could have used missing romance in life, fear of society, fear of dying as a reason to build the character.

The movie tries to introduce comedy with the help of Rajpal Yadav and Divyendu Sharma but fails. The comic scenes are out of place and seems forced for a movie like this. The only humor which works is when Atma is caught couple of times expressing his sexual desires. The dialogues could have been slightly better especially in the first half of the movie.

The acting as good. Everyone did a decent job. The subject was good and overall a movie you can watch for the second half.

The graph of the film just goes on dipping after the initial promise. The fabulous character of Gajraj from Baddhai Ho has been picked as it is but here he has nothing sensible to do. The film looks like it was not made as a creative expression but as a pot boiler. The makers have no clue whether they wanted to entertain audience, critics or themselves. Extremely disappointing, by the end I was left high and dry. No message, no storytelling. The so called comedy is stuff for the sick. The film kept on finding new lows. Pretty similar to the writer director who started with a bang with Tingya and the films have kept on going downhill.