In all honesty, I had better expectations from Raj Kumar Rao, and this movie was not something I thought he would choose. Toaster revolves around Ramakant, who is infamous for being a miser. We come to know about this nature of his when we see him fighting for six rupees from a telecom company, when he takes his wife on a date to a community kitchen, and when we see the society in which their house is located. Shilpa, his wife, gets deeply frustrated when he brings a tester perfume as a wedding gift for a wedding his wife and he are supposed to attend. Now, this attitude gets his wife angry, and they make a whopping purchase of an "expensive toaster". When Ramakant learned that the wedding his wife and he had attended was called off, he was determined to retrieve the toaster and receive a refund. The parents of the bride donate all the wedding gifts. This leads Ramakant to the orphanage where the toaster has now landed. He manages to steal it. One thing leads to another, and the dead landlady's son, Glen, gets killed in an altercation between the two. Ramakant is now in desperate need to hide the fact that Glen was killed in his presence. Meanwhile, the toaster has now landed in a troubled territory. Things get even worse when his neighbor, Mrs Pherwani, starts to blackmail him over a video. The question is, will Ramakant come clean now that the police are deeply involved in the case?
At first glance, Toaster seemed to be a funny murder mystery movie. However, as and when progress is made, things start to become boring. It is a spiral that goes on and on and at one point feels endless. The plot is dragged for no reason, just because the makers wanted to make it "interesting". However, that is the very reason why the movie feels highly stupid.
The jokes are fine at first, but like the plot, they too become unfunny after a while. Rajkumar Rao, a talented actor, suddenly becomes annoying to the core and soon becomes unbearable. As a viewer, you will be waiting for his character to see some light at the end of the tunnel. And just like, we are left hanging in the same hope that comes towards the end. Sadly, by then, we had all lost our patience to watch and understand anything of that sort.
The pacing is extremely uneven. In the first half, the movie moves at a good pace. The entire background of the toaster-based plot is shown. This will keep you hooked enough to watch the second half. And that is where the downfall starts to happen. The second half moves at the speed of a snail, with scenes feeling like a repeat. At one point, I felt like telling the makers that I understood what they were trying to tell and that they should definitely move ahead with Ramakant's story. So dear reader, you can very well imagine how annoying things must have been. Acting in Toaster is good, though I wasn't expecting such good actors to agree on a script like this. But nonetheless. All in all, this movie can be skipped because it doesn't have anything to offer.
Final Score- [4/10]
Reviewed by - Neerja Ch
Follow @NeerjaCH on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times