‘Good Luck Sakhi’ movie review: Needed a lot more gravitas

Nagesh Kukunoor’s film starring Keerthy Suresh is a throwback to simpler times, but gets too simplistic and predictable

Had Good Luck Sakhi been a short story in a book, it could have been a young adult fiction that harks back to simpler times, narrating the story of a young woman from a village who dusted off her bad luck tag. As a film, it unravels like a throwback to less complicated narratives of the Hindi cinema of the 1970s. Kukunoor had stated that he wrote the story trying to keep the vibe of Hrishikesh Mukherji. The first hour pretty much exists in such a zone, despite the story being set in a fictitious Rayalaseema village where a Telangana origin Sakhi (Keerthy Suresh) takes centre stage.

It is tough to watch the opening portions without giving in to a big smile. A baraat is on the way to Sakhi’s house and a bunch of kids think it is fun to welcome the groom with crackers. Taken aback, the horse goes rogue and leaves the groom with a broken limb. Apparently, he is not the first groom to have suffered as a result of Sakhi’s bad luck. Nobody thinks the firecrackers are a problem! It all unfolds like a Hollywood musical, with Devi Sri Prasad setting the mood with the delightful ‘Adigo vastundi bad luck Sakhi…’

The milieu is charming. Chirantan Das’s cinematography captures the earthiness and the pop of colours. Sakhi is unmindful of her unlucky tag and asserts that she will rewrite her doomed fate. The portions where she meets her childhood friend ‘goli’ Raju aka Ramarao (Aadhi Pinisetty), now a theatre actor, are fun to watch, accentuated with the game of marbles and the village candy seller.