Ludo (2020) – Movie Review

Ludo is a dark comedy film directed by Anurag Basu. Anurag Basu and Samrat Chakraborty have written the film. The film has released on 12 November 2020 coinciding with Diwali on Netflix.

The film is an anthology that is set in a quintessential Indian metro and focuses on the overlapping of four wildly different stories. It stars an ensemble cast of Abhishek Bachchan, Rajkumar Rao, Pankaj Tripathi, Aditya Roy Kapoor, Rohit Saraf, Fatima Sana Shaikh, Sanya Malhotra, Pearle Maaney, and Inayat Verma. The film mainly talks about the philosophy of the butterfly effect, and further, it extends to the fact that whatever happens in life is nothing but disciplined chaos. There is nothing like good or bad, or black or white. And, at a high-level, the film tries to map this philosophy of life to the game of Ludo, a strategy board game.

All four stories in the film are very fresh and appealing. And, the performances of the brilliant ensemble cast make it even more engaging. The characters are written very well that we immediately and unknowingly start following them. The style of storytelling of this film made me remember the Tamil film Super Deluxe (2019). The screenplay and direction of the film are excellent. Anurag Basu is well-known for his peculiar style of filmmaking, and even this film gives similar vibes as that of his last two films Barfi (2012) and Jagga Jasoos (2017). The background score of the film also complements it at every level. The songs in the film are situational and perfectly woven into the story, sung by Arijit Singh and Jubin Nautiyal.

The film takes the first half an hour to introduce all the lead characters as the players of the Ludo game. And, then till the end, it is just a non-stop funny and quirky ride. One more thing I would especially like to mention here is the use of four colors (Red, Yellow, Blue, and Green – from Ludo) mapping to the four stories in the film. Whenever the characters from a particular story appear on the screen, we see those colors in the form of their clothing, wall colors, cars, goggles, etc.

Verdict : Undoubtedly, it is one of the best films in 2020. It is refreshing and a good time watch. Just go for it.

Rating : 4/5

Check the trailer here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT9Gihrxa4Q

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