~~~An insult to cinema~~~. Review on Souten - The Other Woman

Souten is like a bad dream, it's the best way to punish an enemy, in fact it's the perfect punishment for the writer and director themselves. Just tie them to the seats and make them watch three shows of their own film back to back.

But if, like me, you manage to sit through the entire film despite all the complaining, then there's really only one explanation for it. Some movies are so bad, that they make you laugh.

A bit on story {If you can call that!}

Raj (Vikram Singh), is attracted to an older married woman, Mitali (Mahima Chaudhry). Mitali is married to Ranbeer (Gulshan Grover), who neglects her. Her lonleliness pulls her towards Raj.Raj's sister-in-law, Smitha (Padmini Kolhapure) gets wind of this and pulls up Mitali. They are family friends. Mitali pays no heed to this. the confrontation scene between the two is good. Smitha even convinces Raj that he's walking on the wrong path. Raj realizes his mistake and backtracks. Mitali is reluctant to give him up but is forced to.

Mitali's step daughter, Sapna (Kiran Rathod) returns from London after completing her studies and fall in love with Raj. Mitali is upset at this turn of events. She tells Sapna about Raj and her past. A shocked Sapna breaks away from Raj ....

Souten tries to be a bold saga aimed at the frontbenchers .But the portions that are meant to be a shocker are so juvenile that you want to tear your hair in disgust.As you may have guessed already, the problem with Souten is its script. Writer Karan Razdan's plot is as limp as a noodle, and his screenplay is as flat as a papad. Every single character in the film is as good as a cardboard caricature with lines so predictable that you could have scripted them yourself without any difficulty at all.

Souten is mind-bogglingly incompetent because it fails in just about every department - the writing is rubbish, the direction is practically non-existent, the background music is so inappropriate it makes you laugh, the ridiculously timed songs slacken the pace of the film, even the acting sucks.

Mahima is so bad that you cannot believe this is the same girl who delivered such natural performances in Pardes, Daag and Dil Kya Karein.Also her costumes are awful.. Also I'm going to make a special mention of Padmini here who is so annoying in this film that you want to lock her up for good. Gone is her charisma and what we're left with is a screaming shouting, hysterical old women.Vikram Singh - who made that guy an actor?

Somewhere in the second half of the film, I dozed off for about 15 minutes, and when I woke up again, I noticed that nothing much had really happened while I was knocked out. Souten goes on and on and on without any concern for your patience. I'm willing to sponsor director Razdan where he can get some fresh air and clear his head.