The film opens on a spacious, ostentatiously decorated drawing room where some meeting is going on between two opposing political leaders who are never seen in the film again. In walks Nirupama Sanyal in spotless white, with her ornate walking stick. She is sporting a steaked wig that is carefully pinned on to her head so that her real hairline keeps peeping out to remind the audience that though she is playing grandmother to our hero, she is really quite young. There was really no need to get into all that trouble because her flawless skin, sans wrinkles or lines would put a pimply teenager to shame and send her rushing to the nearest skin care clinic. Her lines, for some mysterious reason, have been dubbed by Rita Koiral, another actress who plays similar roles in similar films. So one does not know what drove the director to use one actress for the visuals and another for the voice.

Cut to a song-dance sequence where the loud song is almost a total copy from another Bengali film released last year and the same goes for most of the song numbers and even the background score. The dance is an apology for this fine performing art. Raj is gallivanting across beautifully manicured gardens and parks with a dozen young girls. All of them, including Rahul, have two left feet and have appeared to have not bothered to take dancing lessons or even rehearse for the number. The film moves on from one track to the next, as if on its own volition, from Raj’s palatial mansion to the bylane of the unnamed city, to Kusum’s flower stall, to her drunken father, to the girl at the tea-shop next door, to her sick kid sister at home and no one knows till the end what is the ailment she suffers from!

The film is filled with dream scenes featuring the electric pair of Rahul-Priyanka with a lot of smooching and clinching thrown in. But the pair fails to repeat the magic of Chirodini Tumi Je Amaar (CTJA). In this first film, Priyanka and Rahul came with the freshness Bengali cinema was dying to get for many years. They are young, new and promising. But their real-life, live-together history seems to have stripped the magic off their screen romance. The dream scenes are flat, appear synthetic and do nothing to enhance the romance. They have completely author-backed roles in this film also. But they fail to live up to it. Rahul’s face, figure, height and body fail to invest his screen persona with either the charisma of a classy hero or the looks of a screen hero. He was fine as the poor boy in CTJA but fails to do anything with Raj despite the comic disguises, the chasing, the smooching and the works. Priyanka with her lovely looks, her charming effervescence and her good taste for colour, never mind the designer wear she dons as a ‘poor little flower girl’ is likely to take her far beyond such inane films and roles if she is more discerning in picking and choosing. Strange that Kusum is hardly moved by the suicide of her close friend Shiuli. But under a good director, Priyanka will flower well. Rahul, who has the potential, needs to train in body building, acting, dancing and fighting before he faces the camera again.

Wonder of wonders is that Prosenjit does an ‘item’ song in the film which is wrongly positioned, choreographed and orchestrated so it simply fails to become the film’s USP as the write-ups say. It is not even an ‘item’ song because neither does he dance to the song he lip-synchs to, nor does he bare his body. What made him agree to do this no one knows. But admittedly, it adds a pleasant visual relief to this otherwise dragging film.

Now to that action freak called kick boxing on screen. In Bhalobasha Zindabad, there is no kicking at all, only plain and simple boxing. But the billboards in the film clearly mention a kick-boxing contest. Why? Kharaj Bandopadhyay as Raj’s uncle is almost tragic in a role he should have rightfully declined because it is almost like an insult to his talent. No thanks to the largely copied music, the voices of champion singers like Emon, Annesha, etc, are completely wasted. It is sad that Reshmi Mitra, who did a very good documentary on Pramathesh Chandra Barua and also some serious work for television, should choose to direct a film like this just for commercial reasons. Commercial demands have their own logic, their strategies and manipulations. Just putting in romance, kick-boxing that is not kick-boxing at all, song-dance numbers that are half-hearted attempts at the most, does not make for a good commercial film.

Does this mean that there is nothing to commend about Bhalobasha Zindabad? There is. The young actress who plays Shiuli, Kusum’s friend who runs the tea-shop and later commits suicide, has done well and the cameo has been scripted well too. Rudranil Ghosh as Bishu, supported by a solid characterization, stands out with a sparkling performance, outshining everyone else in comparison, proving once again that a badly made film need not reduce an actor’s talent or performance, to zero.