Ludo (2020) Movie Review & Summary

Anurag Basu’s Ludo is an entertaining mess. It intricately weaves the five different storylines together and still manages to bring them all together in the end. The different ‘colors’ of the game interacted with each other at different points throughout the whole show and we as the viewers get to watch the different pieces of the puzzle come together to build the entire story. The main characters are also very eccentric (especially Pankaj) which drove the plot and made the whole film enjoyable. I laughed several times throughout the film at the ridiculous things that happened, from using a tractor to break into a hospital to the multiple times Pankaj survived. The only part I do not fully enjoy is the blue part, where the blooming romance between Rohit and Pearle seems to fall short compared to the other relationships in the film.

Now let’s talk about the stellar cast. Anurag Basu seemed to have assembled a mini Avengers into the show with big names such as Pankaj Tripathi, Abhishek Bachchan, Rajkummar Rao and Aditya Roy Kapoor, and as usual these cast delivered. One scene that really stood out to me is one where Abhishek was trying to get his daughter’s attention. It was a silent scene and his emotions through his eyes were enough to break my heart into pieces. Also, Pankaj is solid as usual. He played the badass criminal with a soft spot for women and delivered a lot of memorable scenes. My favourites include the time when he tried to cling on to the tractor to escape the hospital and him surviving the final shoot off to meet the nice nurse lady with a lot of money only to get hit by a bus ala Mean Girls.

If there’s something that I don’t like about the film, it would be the first 30 minutes of the film where lots of characters were introduced left and right. I came to understand the concept of the film later on where many characters were needed to play out the five parallel storylines and perhaps the need for plenty of character introduction. However, I still think there were characters and scenes that the show could do without, for example the Gods of Death who play Ludo and occasionally narrate the plot whenever they feel like it. The time can be used to develop the other main characters more or the blue color plot, which like I mentioned, I feel a bit lackluster.