Pagglait means crazy in colloquial Hindi.

This Netflix film is about a young widow Sandhya played by Sanya Malhotra who discovered more about her husband after his demise than she would like to. Amidst a bunch of crazy relatives who came to mourn and stayed till the tehrveen (the 13th-day memorial ritual), Sandhya learned a few life lessons that she wouldn’t have learned in her otherwise ok life. The film reminded us of Queen? Yes, it’s a completely different film with the absolutely same core.

This approximately two hours long film deals with a little too many plots. Sandhya’s inability to feel anything about her husband’s demise, the finding of (spoiler alert) her husband’s affair with a colleague Akanksha (Sayani Gupta), the class divide between her and Akanksha, brother-in-law having a soft spot for her, financial crises at home, relatives having their own agendas, so on and so forth. The director keeps moving from one plot to another in a rather slow film. Especially the portion where Sandhya is trying to bond with her husband’s ex felt too long and stretched.

We fail to understand when Sandhya has no feelings for her dead husband, why is she trying to understand him better by meeting the other woman in her life again and again? Still, on the brighter side, brownie points for not showing the girls smoking and drinking together to ease their pain as that’s the new age freedom look for women (read or – please don’t – our review of Lipstick Under My Burkha. Even thinking about this film sends chills down our nerves.)

We couldn’t help thinking of Queen especially at the end, where Sanya realises, and is the moot point of the film, “Apne faisle khud nahi loge toh log le lenge…” (If you won’t make your decisions, others will take it). None of the girls, Sandhya in Paglait or Rani in Queen are weak women, but still, they let their families, boyfriends, husbands rule their lives. And both the films let the leading ladies discover “CHOICE” in a very short time. While Rani discovered that she had a choice on a honeymoon she went to, alone, Sandhya in Paglait did it during the 13 days of mourning.

The major difference in both films is while Queen was highly entertaining, Pagglait is lackluster to somewhat boring. While Queen had every character at the top of their acting game, Pagglait’s cast just touches you on the surface and never penetrates your emotions. Ashutosh Rana, Raghuveer Yadav, and many other awesome artists totally wasted here. Only Sheeba Chaddha who played the mother-in-law shone from the cast.

Every song in Queen was a gem and helped take the movie forward, Pagglait’s music is just average. None of the songs stay with you.

All in all, although Pagglait is a decent film that can be watched by an audience of any age and gender, it’s just not great. There’s a lot of masala but most of it is left uncooked.