A recent trend in the Nepali film industry: rope in a group of well-known actors and give them funny roles to play. The reason: people will come watch the movie no matter how boring it may be. Kohalpur Express–I’m not surprised–does not buck the trend, even at the cost of creativity and presentation.
The story begins with SP (Buddhi Tamang), Krishna (Binod Neupane) and Salo Keto planning to kidnap (Rabindra Jha) Agrawal’s son. The mastermind behind this kidnapping is an expecting mother Champa (Priyanka Karki) who wants to have a happy life. She believes that looting a rich and corrupt man is the only way to do it without trampling on her ‘morals’.
But the story takes a turn when kidnappers SP, Krishna and Salo Keto get injured and Kohalpur Express (Keki Adhikari) has to kidnap the kid. However, all goes horribly wrong after she not only picks up the wrong kid, but also loses the ransom money.
Initially, you think the movie is quite nice. But when you realise the movie is an adaptation of the Kamal Hassan-starer Mumbai Express, the movie loses its appeal. Apart from a handful of sequences and dialogues, the movie offers nothing different. It revolves around the same narrative Nepali films normally play around money.
Keki Adhikari, also the producer of the film, has done a decent job as she plays the role of a woman who has difficulty hearing–she can do no wrong. But that said, she has no proper emotions in the movie and is always serious.
Karki is good as usual but her role of an angry pregnant woman is not as good it could have done. At times you wonder: Why is she is always mad? But her chemistry with Tamang does look genuine, unlike her ridiculously large belly.
Tamang doesn’t have a huge role but he makes you laugh with his usual witty dialogues. He is slowly becoming the Brahmanandam Kanneganti of Nepali movies.
Reecha Sharma is just odd. Her role of Agrawal’s second wife is awkward and she is too loud most of the times and overdoes things with her expressions.
The other actors are bearable. Child actor Kushagra Bhattarai gives a good performance but needs to work on his emotions in the future. Neupane, in a different role, has done quite well and pulled off the role of a stammerer with grace.
The script and screenplay are more than just an adaptation of Mumbai Express, so there’s not a lot one can talk about them. The positive aspect of the movie is that the writer has keeps the suspense under the wraps pretty effectively. The cinematography is quite good like all movies being made these days.
The music is not so great. The song ‘C-O-W Cow’ has received over 8 million views on YouTube. All other songs in the film are a just there to prolong the runtime.
The background score given by Rohit Shakya is good, especially the title song.
Genre: Comedy
Director: Bishal Bhandari
Cast: Keki Adhikari, Priyanka Karki, Reecha Sharma, BuddhiTamang, Rabindra Jha, Binod Neupane
Being screened at cinemas near you
