Mastram Review

One Line Review: An engagingly sizzling story of one writer who brought erotica to the mainstream male populace.

Positive Points: Bone tickling adult humor; engaging and interesting plot; captures your fantasy, for real.

Negative Points: Lacks a bit in that engaging stuff; abrupt ending.

Plot: Living in a small town in Himachal, Raja Ram Vaishnav (Rahul Bagga) works full time with a bank, a job that he doesn't really admire. His interests and talent lie in writing. He is married to Renu (Tara Alsha Berry), who supports him greatly. Also, he has a close friend Mahesh (Istiyak Khan), who is his drinking partner with or without occasion.

One fine day, when he is insulted and reprimanded by his boss for writing a page of romantic novel at the expense of his work, he makes up his mind to not to slog after the job anymore.

The incident fires him up and he resigns and goes ahead with pursuing his passion. However, initially he doesn't find any takers for his writing, though he gets the idea to add some 'masala' when he approaches Prabhat Publishers.

On his second visit, the owner of the publishing company (Vinod Nahardih) gets excited after reading the explicit descriptions of sexual encounters in his writing. This opens the gates for him to a brave new world of erotic writing that will change his life. No sooner, his books start selling like hot cakes with the name 'Mastram' and his life really turns around.

He gets his inspirations from what he observes around him and what he fantasizes could happen 'what it'.

However, it is not too long that he is faced with competition and is being side tracked by the publishers as he is being eclipsed by another competitor. But it's not this entry of new book that is going to get him into trouble, but his imagination that is running too wild for his erotic literature.

Direction And Other Technical Aspects: The film has been directed with a significant effort to not only keep he audiences interested and engaged, but also give them that much wanted excitement and thrill. The film embodies not only the strong sense of heightened excitement when someone would read such book, but also presents life according to the protagonist as he carries on with playing with the strings of the reader's (and the audience's) fantasy.

Cinematography is just fine, with no extra or impressive camera angles, but just plain show, which does more than enough.

Performances: Rahul Bagga's performance is impressive as he portrays a bit timid, but strong willed and strong minded young man who is determined to make it big, no matter what.

Vinod Nahardih is the typically arrogant and 'my way or the highway' kind of middle aged chap, with sarcasm and cynicism being his primary line of offense, no matter what.

Other characters are also good enough to support the film through its one and half hour of story telling.

Music: 'Achko Machko' by Yo Yo Honey Singh is the Gujarati single in the film, with its lyrics telling a story just like the books by the protagonist. One could say that the film doesn't need any more songs when it has this.

Final Verdict: 'Mastram' is not just the story of one man trying to do something that is considered a taboo, but it is the story of each and every guy, who has got that hidden material in text or much more than that, which he often needs. The film indirectly tries to convey that no matter how the society looks at it from the above, it knows that it can neither hate nor suppress this. Although one may feel that the film lacks the stuff to a significant extent.