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Padman had a fair start of around 20-25%. The opening is similar to Toilet Ek Prem Katha in the big cities but a less in the smaller cities but this is expected as its a film for the ladies audience and the mass male audience is not likely to come on the first morning.
The film could still put up decent numbers in places like Gujarat, Rajasthan and MP despite not being for that audience as with Tiger Zinda Hai finished in these places and Padmaavat not playing it has an open field in these markets. The main markets will be the bigger cities and they can push the film over the weeeknd.
The film has an unusual theme and although is good for calling a film different and all that but the box office works in a different way and these themes take time and get accepted if the film has entertainment
The fair start here is due to Akshay Kumar otherwise this type of film could have been really struggling for initial numbers. Now the film is in a position to make good headway on Saturday and Sunday if the content is accepted and then it has the potential of a strong weekday run due to thw holidays.
The business on Sunday will be crucial as the Saturday jump will be there but Sunday has to follow up as that is when the families come out and the subject of the film can be awkward for the conservative family audience. This is where the film will need humour for the subject to be told in a light way so the family audiences accept the film.
If the strongest point of the film is Akshay Kumar, the weakest is the director as its actually impossible to think that a director with a story telling style of Paa, Cheeni Kum etc can give a big grosser unless it a huge budget which is not a the case here.
But there is a chance of a grosser here due to the star but obviously the story cant be told like the Cheeni Kum's of the world and has to be in a simplier format and easily understood
Directed by R. Balki and starring Akshay Kumar, Sonam Kapoor and Radhika Apte, this film wobbles precariously as it becomes more fiction than fact
I never imagined I would see a Hindi film in which the hero, played by an A-list star, puts on a sanitary pad and then squats several times to make sure it sits right. So firstly, big applause to Akshay Kumar and Twinkle Khanna for putting their might behind this incredible true story that puts periods and female hygiene in the spotlight.
Pad Man is the cinematic adaptation of the story of Arunachalam Muruganantham, a school drop-out from Coimbatore who invented a low-cost sanitary pad making machine. Twinkle first adapted it as a short story in her book The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad. Muruganantham revolutionized menstrual hygiene in the country. His story is extraordinary at one point, when no woman including his wife, was willing to give him genuine feedback, he did wear pads himself to test them. Honestly, if this wasn't true, you wouldn't believe it.
As long as Pad Man sticks to the fantastical true story, it holds. Within the first few minutes, director and co-writer R. Balki establishes that mechanic Lakshmikant Chauhan is unlike any other man in this village in Madhya Pradesh. He is extra-ordinarily caring and despite the lack of education, progressive. Lakshmi will create a cushioned cycle seat so that his wife can ride comfortably and devise a contraption for cutting onions so that she doesn't need to cry while doing it. When he discovers that she is using dirty cloth pieces during her period, he resolves to help not just her but all the women around him. But no good deed goes unpunished and Lakshmi finds himself cast out. It is declared that he is mansik roop se bimar a madman.
Until the mid-way point, Pad Man has snatches of power and emotion. Some scenes feel like a labored public service announcement and the melodrama gets shrill in places but largely Balki and his co-writer Swanand Kirkire keep the story moving. Humour is used cleverly. And Akshay, with his toothy grin and determined earnestness, propels the narrative with the wonderful Radhika Apte providing strong support. Despite the broad strokes writing, this relationship grounds the narrative in an emotional reality. The locations in Madhya Pradesh are nicely captured by DOP P.C. Sreeram. There are lovely visuals of a line of neighboring homes, each with an identical verandah to which the women are banished when their period comes. And I enjoyed the title track by Amit Trivedi.
But Pad Man wobbles precariously as it becomes more fiction than fact. The writing gets unforgivably lazy. Especially with the character of Sonam Kapoor. She gets the thankless role of Pari a tabla player who becomes Lakshmi's first client and cheerleader. We are told that her tabla skills are so good that poore Madhya Pradesh ko hila diya' but after that tabla is never mentioned again. The romantic angle between Lakshmi and Pari is the weakest link in the film it's both unnecessary and unconvincing.
The story seems to disconnect from logic and reality. Amitabh Bachchan, credited as superhero Amitabh Bachchan, appears to give a speech on the innovative spirit of Indians. There is a montage of Lakshmi making his low-cost sanitary pad machine, which looks like a nicely lit undershirt commercial. And though Pad Man is firmly committed to women empowerment, some of the dialogue is painfully clumsy. At one point, a character says mard hone ka maza ander ki aurat jagaane se hi aata hai.
Pad Man, a superman without the cape, is a memorable character. Like the real Pad Man, Lakshmi is self-deprecating and very funny especially in the climactic speech at the United Nations. I wish the film matched his sparkle.
This content was originally posted by: OgreatoneDon't think much of this film
Arunachalam Muruganantham is a fascinating man. Not just for embracing the worthy cause of producing affordable sanitary napkins for the poor and revolutionising the concept of menstrual hygiene in rural India but also as an individual, especially when it comes to his unique, often self-deprecatory, sense of humour. His deep-rooted wit shines through in Amit Virmani's documentary Menstrual Man as you see him making a light of the worst ordeals in his life. The idiosyncrasy and ingenuity could have led to a compelling biographical portrait on screen. Unfortunately R. Balki drowns out all the delightful drollness and quirks in overt piety and dreary melodrama. Akshay Kumar's Lakshmikant then is not even half as intriguing as India's real Pad Man.
There is a certain dignity and forthrightness with which Muruganantham talks (in Menstrual Man) about dropping out of school and getting to learn English his own way from the scratch. He candidly admits that his English is self-taught, "designed by himself and you instinctively respect his native intelligence.
On the other hand, in Pad Man, the long U.N. speech sequence in calculated broken English (that seems modelled more on Amitabh Bachchan's "Aisi angrezi aave hai ke I can leave angrez behind monologue in Namak Halaal), makes an annoying caricature of Lakshmikant and, in turn, Muruganantham.
Balki doesn't know how he wants to tackle the story at times his treatment is like the public service advertising of Information and Broadcasting Mministry's Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP), merely expanding on the real life incidents without any flair or imagination the talk of dirty rags and even ash that women take recourse to during "those five days, the risk of infection, the talk of expensive sanitary napkins and how buying it would mean cutting down the family's milk budget, the feedback forms given to medical college students or finding out about cellulose fibre.
Even Muruganantham's weird research methodology is replicated as it is the artificial uterus, football for a bladder, animal blood and even wearing the pad himself. Yet, at other moments Balki blows things into the utterly filmi terrain characters and emotions pitched on the extremes, a love triangle needlessly thrust in and some heightened moments like Lakshmi, with his "stained pants jumping in slo-mo into the Narmada or hanging onto the balcony of a young girl who has just started menstruating to give her a pad.
To look at the bright side, Maheshwar and Narmada are a new welcome break from Varanasi-Ganga setting of Hindi films. There is touch of whimsy in some dialogue and phrases a person being referred to as Narmada ka kachchua (Turtle of Narmada) or a casanova called "dheele naade ka aadmi (now this would be entirely lost in translation) or a shopkeeper asking Lakshmi "Kishton mein gadda bana rahe ho kya (Are you making the mattress in instalments) when he keeps asking him for some cotton every day.
On the other hand, some lines left me cringing. Call me a feminazi but could we please dispense with making a "male virtue out of coming to a "woman's aid: "Ek aurat ki hifaazat mein naakaamyab insaan apne ko mard kaise kah sakta hai?" (A person who is unable to protect a woman can't call himself a man) goes a line here. Funnily another "period film that came last year Phullu had a similar dripping with male nobility dialogue: "Jo auraton ka dard nahin samjhta, Bhagwan use mard nahin samjhta (The one who disregards the pain of a woman isn't considered a man by God).
Did Muruganantham also get so upright, and uptight, about fighting for a woman's cause? I doubt. There's impeccable idealism in his social entrepreneurship and community development model but without any moral burden that weighs down his on screen avatar(s) and the film(s) at large.
Akshay Kumar's performance comes with the trappings and obvious awareness of being a "crusader; I'd much rather take him in an easygoing outing like Jolly LLB2. Radhika Apte has little else to do other than weep copiously. Sonam Kapoor gets the worst intro scene in the history of Indian cinema playing the tabla in a concert, offbeat at that. She has a go at the instrument in one more scene (out of tune again) and then the professional table player element of her personality gets conveniently forgotten. Why make her a tabla player in the first place?
Ignorance is bliss. Perhaps, it would be better to see the film in a vacuum. For all those unaware of Muruganantham, especially those in North India, and all those who haven't seen Phullu last year, Balki's film could well be an eye-opener. But for those in the know, Pad Man is an example of how good causes may not always make great cinema.
'PadMan has its premise in place. Now if only it had some wings,' says Sukanya Verma.
Akshay Kumar is a man on a mission.
Most of his acclaimed work in recent times involves him taking up a cause that'll enrich society or whip up nationalistic fervour.
There's an obvious enthusiasm in him to play characters taking a morally high ground. And while it is advantageous to spearhead significant subjects, a monotony of earnestness has set in.
In the R Balki-directed PadMan, Akshay is back to playing a considerate husband fighting provincial mind-sets and social taboos. Only this time creating a disposable sanitary pad -- not toilet -- occupy his unwavering attention.
His Lakshmikant Chauhan is a man of exceptional sensitivity and ingenuity. Something his young bride, raised on orthodox, old school beliefs can neither understand nor appreciate.
Where most actresses wouldn't rise above annoyingly regressive, Radhika Apte imbues her character's embarrassment and irritation with a heartfelt understanding of a woman caught between her cravings for comforting conventionality while faced with boldness beyond her grasp.
She is like as her husband complains, 'Rani Mukerji ke zamane mein Devika Rani ki dialogue bol rahi ho.'
The other women in his life -- his elderly mother and three sisters -- aren't allowed such complexity. They are little more than scandalised, scampering, bunnies every time Lakshmi appears before them flashing a sparkling white pad in hand.
Undeterred by his family's disapproval and social ostracism, Lakshmi endeavours to discover the mechanism behind a serviceable pad in a manner that looks unexpectedly comfortable and pleasant on screen.
Scenes where he is sitting by a pretty pond encircled by frangipani flowers and heaping cotton wads on fresh green leaves are filmed in a curiously delicious manner (by P C Sreeram), as though he's packing tiffin of steamed idlis. Nor has receiving free samples of materials from overseas suppliers ever looked more at the snap of a finger.
Although the treatment is understated if compared to Toilet: Ek Prem Katha, its feminist hero ethos -- Ek aurat ki hifazat mein nakamiyab aadmi apne aap ko mard kaise keh sakta hai? -- are almost identical.
Menstruation is seldom a part of our conversation in the movies. And PadMan scores for highlighting the shocking disregard for menstrual hygiene as well as unjustified steep pricing of means that offer protection from the same a lot more effectively than last year's Phullu.
What PadMan is aiming for is admirable and a genuine concern, but it isn't always above the missteps common to most films of the meaningful genre.
In the beginning, it adopts a largely logical approach at the rampant problem. Save for the 'Test match' slur, not much is dwelled upon the absurd superstitions associated with menstruation, an outlook that is prevalent among the educated and privileged lot as well.
Instead, PadMan's energy is directed in documenting Lakshmi's journey and experiments into a fairy-tale triumph replete with Balki regular Amitabh Bachchan's blessing and all.
To Balki's credit he presents these technical pursuits with enough excitement to sustain interest.
There's a recurring parallel in the visuals of Hindu Gods like Hanuman and Krishna as coconut and Prasad vending machines of religious expectations next to Lakshmi's socially frowned engineering, which subtly conveys the challenges of introducing practical methods in a deeply convoluted network of obsolete beliefs.
It is inspired by the true story of Coimbatore's Arunachalam Muruganantham and his award-winning invention, one that not only offered functional, economical sanitary napkins but also empowered women as means to earn an independent livelihood featured as a fictionalised short story in co-producer Twinkle Khanna's The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad.
PadMan dramatises his reality to accomodate romance and distinction with a calculation that is one of the weakest aspects of an otherwise constructive narrative.
Serving as catalyst to this purpose, Sonam Kapoor contributes with her sartorial elegance and appears at home in her character's urban, rational and humanitarian sensibilities. But Balki's need to complicate her platonic equation with Akshay leaves the viewer both confused and distracted.
The big speech at UN to follow, a cheap imitation of Sridevi's, from the director's better half Gauri Shinde's English Vinglish, rechrishtened Linglish here, single-handedly demolishes everything Akshay's carefully calibrated performance has worked for.
It's one thing to come out great and entirely another to claim it. 'Mad only become famous,' he stresses in a monologue reeking of 'Look, how socially conscious I am.' The affectation is conspicuous and disappointing especially when even the blood stains in his pants seemed more sincere.
For all its worth, PadMan has its premise in place. Now if only it had some wings.
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