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Jungle book : My quick take on Raveena Tandon’s ‘Arayanak’ (Netflix)
No this has nothing to do with Rudyard Kiplings classic tale of Mogawi, although this one also has a badly CGId ‘Bagheera’ (a black panther) who occasionally visits the sleepy town in Himachal and creates some kind of intrigue amongst audience. No doubt the pristine location of this fictional town is simply awesome and its misty surroundings amplify the shroud of mystery of the plot.
It’s a typical whodunnit plot where a French tourist is found hanging in the woods and the finger of suspicion is pointed towards many characters in the plot. Raveena Tandon plays a no nonsense cop Kasturi Dogra who dives deep into the case to solve it. It is nice to see this टिप टिप बारिशवाली leading lady back in action (it’s shear coincidence that her टिप टिप song is recycled recently by Rohit shetty in his Suryavanshi).
The 8 episode long series seems to be extra long because of slow pace of first two episodes, it’s like team India asking Pujara open the batting in T20, can you imagine how painful it will be to watch. Writer lost the plot by introducing too many characters in plot and making them look like ‘obvious’ killers , secondly too many subplots also dragged the plot. Like in western ‘werewolves’ concept, here they introduced a ‘werepanther’ character (नर तेंदुआ) just to add some errieness to the story but failed. With so many characters introduced in the story, writer and director could not do justice with most of them, hence came up with a botched up thriller with typical bollywood style climax.
It is beautiful location and great camera work keeps you interested in the story ( no it’s not a binge watch worthy, I took break and watched it over 3 day period). Second reason is the Ravishing Raveena (अपुनके जमानेकी heroine है) who is fit as fiddle and slips into a Dogra skin with elan , but somehow her put on Haryanvi accent was a misfit for a pahadi Dogra. Bunch of trained stage actors like Ashutosh Rana, Zakir Hussain, Anant jog and Milind Shinde lit up the frame whenever they came on the screen.
If you overlook the slow pace in initial episodes and crowding to too many characters in the plot, you will still find it interesting. Watch it and fall in love with Himachal and its pristine locations instead of whodunnit plot
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