Put together a cast like Kay Kay Menon, Ranvir Shorey, Pradhuman Singh (of Tere Bin Laden fame) and Manu Rishi and you already have a certain credibility built to your film. After all, the four have some excellent work in experimental genre to boast off. Maybe that's the logic with which filmmaker Rakesh Mehta goes ahead to make a wayward film Life Ki Toh Lag Gayi.
Life Ki Toh Lag Gayi is a one day journey of four different people struggling in the city of Mumbai. One with vengeance, one on a mission, one with hope and one to con. They eventually end up at one place and find their ways...
Tensed Salman (Kay Kay Menon) is looking for the murderers of his parents, a humiliated cop ACP Chautala (Manu Rishi Chadha) is looking for 4 Nigerian drug peddlers with 24 hours dead line on his neck, a desperate lover Amol Ganguly (Ranvir Shorey) comes to rescue his beloved girl friend who got married to some millionaire, a runaway girl from Chandigarh Dolly (Neha Bhasin) wants to go back to home but not before she recovers all the money she has lost in attempt to become the top heroin of Bollywood and then a surprise Ajoy Ghosh the funny Bengali anti Christ rockstar who advises his close friend Amol Ganguly to commit a suicide and it all happens in one day in city of Mumbai...
There hasn't been any hardcore effort put forth by myself in this synopsis as it's a clear cut lift off from the press note. But when the filmmaker himself doesn't seem to be slogging enough to put together a decent show why blame the critic for lethargy?
If skewing a plot alone could make a film work, Life Ki Toh Lag Gayi may be a monumental piece. Sadly, it doesn't and neither does the film. Four varied plots are corrugated in a garbled fashion, so much so at even within themselves they appear highly disjointed.
When you don't have a plot that holds your attention you look for the actors but sadly even that doesn't work in the case of this film for even the likes of Kay Kay Menon seems to have slept through their parts. He appears so disinterested in the film that there's only one scene (the end sequence with Sharat Saxena) that shows his acting prowess. Ranvir Shorey's dubbed dialog that have a Bengali slant are badly placed on his lip-movements and don't appear in sync. His plot with Pradhuman gets increasingly annoying scene by scene and either want to kill yourself or the actors. Neha Bhasin holds just one expression throughout the film and meaninglessly wander from place to place.
Characters keep coming after every 10 minutes right till the end. So you have Manu Rishi as the Haryanvi cop, Tom Alter, Jackie Shroff, Shakti Kapoor, Asrani, Rukhsaar, Sharat Saxena among the others I may have missed for the surplus of it all!
To sum it up, Life Ki Toh Lag Gayi is best avoided unless you derive some evil pleasure in punishing yourself.