Review: PADMAN

1st Half Is Painful As Periods

2nd Half Thankfully Is Absorbing

2.5 stars

Mini Review:

This is a dramatised biopic of India’s sanitary ‘Pad’ man,

who in his quest for making cheaper sanitary napkins

for his wife, suffered socially, was ostracised and then

ultimately acknowledged for his innovation. Akshay Kumar

does a fabulous job as small town inventor but the story

comes together only in the second half with the arrival of

Sonam Kapoor who guides him to greatness. If you can

endure the slow, unmoving first half, this film is socially

relevant.

Main Review:

Last year you watched ‘Phullu’ a film made rather shoddily on

the same subject, and one has learnt that there is another film

in the works about the same Pad man. How does this film fare?

Akshay Kumar plays Laxmikant Chauhan, who is a fabricator,

a small time inventor. His family has four women (two sisters, a

mother and a wife). His saucer-eyed wife is Radhika Apte, the

perfect small town woman, surprised and embarrassed at her

husband’s display of affection.  His distress at discovering that his

wife has to endure the unhygienic use of cloth during menstruation

is so great he wants her to use sanitary pads. But the cost is

prohibitive and the stigma attached to ‘women’s problems’ is great.

So he attempts something that inventors will. He attempts to make

a ‘pad’ at home. His logic is, it would be cheaper, and his wife

won’t have to endure the possibility of infection (and maybe

death) with the use of cloth.

It just ‘looks wrong’ according to his wife. And the audience, then

begins to endure a hopelessly weepy wife who is like, ‘Why are

you interested in what’s happening between a woman’s legs’. He

is unable to explain his fears, and he attempts to get his sister,

married out of town, to try his home-made sanitary pad, and a

neighborhood girl. Socially, in a small town, these actions are not

just odd, but a horrendous interference in ‘women’s matters’.

Thankfully as he explains later, every failure just made him

doggedly determined to succeed. The film’s second half actually

begins to tell the story, which is very interesting. His efforts at

trying to understand why a sanitary napkin costs so much are

really endearing. Then arrives Pari, Sonam Kapoor, who

inadvertently is his first customer after he is trying out his

fabricated machine. Pari figures out what is wrong with his sales

approach and his ‘low cost pad’ business takes off.

Sonam Kapoor just shines in the small role and is such a stark

contrast to his weepy wife, that you begin to notice Akshay Kumar

as a hero not just as an eccentric chap. Pari is played with charm

and grace you are forced to look at this young actor with fresh

eyes. You want to reach out and hug her after she tells Akshay

what she does on the flight. That is so real, it matches the

brilliant speech Akshay gives at the United Nations (a tad

overdone, I thought, but needed, for a socially relevant film).

The romance is unexpected and you wish characters had

broken tradition and the hero had chosen a beautiful, smart

woman instead of going back to his silly, weepy, wife who

abandons him.

The film is socially relevant so critics will be careful when offering

critique. And even though it has a stellar star cast, this film could

go straight to TV to actually reach rural women. But the second

half is worth the two and a half stars it has earned.

P.S. Two movies on sanitary pads are enough. How new or 
different is the third film going to be? Please, no more.


(This review, sans the post script, appears on 
www.nowrunning.com )