Gulabi

The film revolves around the lives of a police officer and a bar dancer and the relation they share.

On the outset, 'Gulabi' looks quite a promising film with a plot that brings two stark opposites together. A passionate and feared police officer ACP Arjun Malvankar (Sachin Khedekar) and his team are involved in chasing an underworld goon and end up killing him in the encounter. Though he receives a rap on the knuckles from the commissioner, Arjun is congratulated by commoners and the media.

Soon after, Arjun and his aide Ravi (Vineet Sharma) are summoned by the home minister (Vinay Apte). During the visit, the minister gets to know about a crime wherein a young boy has stabbed his mother after she refused to give him money to spend on his bar-dancer girlfriend Gulabi (Pakhi Hegde). Taking this as an opportunity, the bramhachari Arjun promises the minister to bring a crackdown on the dancer bar operations. The team raids a bar and takes all the dancers into custody. Amongst all these the presence of Gulabi strikes Arjun as she is his neighbour and he had never suspected her to be involved. The raids continue and the bar starts losing its regular customers. As revenge, Gulabi vows to make Arjun dance in the same bar with her someday. Thus begins her mission to put the phrase love thy neighbour, to practical use. She serenades the officer in such a way that he forgets all about duty and gets carried away by her charm. What happens when he loses everything and comes to know of the reality?

As mentioned before, the plot looks promising initially but half an hour into the movie you start realizing that it is going nowhere. Another thirty minutes and you can predict the story completely. Sachin’s acting is the saving grace as he slips from the strict cop to a hapless romantic but that alone is not enough to make the film watchable. Pakhi’s unnecessary huffs and puffs are annoying and for a bar dancer, she doesn’t really know how to dance. The film stretches much through the second half and gets downright boring towards the end. Those who have watched the Shriram Lagoo-Nanda starrer 'Pinjra' will find a stark similarity in the storylines of the two films.

Guddu Dhanoa has tried his best to make a unique love story but sadly, it doesn’t quite strike a chord with the viewers. Watch this one only if you have to.