"Rosogolla," based on the life of Nabin Chandra Das & his creations, is a film with wasted potential. Directed by Pavel & featuring Ujaan Ganguly, Abantika Biswas, Rajatava Dutta, Kharaj Mukherjee & many more, the two hour long film fails to live upto the expectations. With awful lot of flaws, it's actually hard to point out what the core problem is.
First, the film isn't well written at all. Lack of definitive reality-checks and extremely predictable outcomes from the beginning, the film was bound to be an experiment with the outcome solely depending on its direction. And even in that department, Pavel has failed to keep a consistent pace and a perfect dramatic set-up. At times, I felt as if there's no point of watching the film & that, I'm actually watching some sort of overdramatic Indian serial on the silver screen. A polished and better resolution camera hardly ever manages to fill up the holes. But yet, the cinematographer has done a good job, considering the limited amount of resources, that was evident throughout the movie. Poor VFX with as poor sets is one point you can totally call a "core problem."
Talking about the story itself, it's pretty obvious. All of us have grown up eating the sweets & listening to the stories of Nabin Chandra Das. There was nothing expected out of it & still, the makers found hilarious ways to add "masalas" to it without any elaboration of the actual history. Eventually, the film ended in a peculiar fashion where Rajatava Dutta & Shantilal Mukherjee's characters' characteristics were totally destroyed to glorify the protagonist, for an even more dramatic ending. The ridiculousness reached new heights right there, even more so with the help of a poor cast selection and lead actors' poor acting (and dialogue delivery) skills. Ujaan Ganguly's one dimensional performance especially when his character demanded a lot of layers (with the core being joyous attitude), in particular, was absolutely a disaster in every aspect & that's really unexpected, given the amount of time Shiboprasad & Nandita, as producers, or Pavel, as director, usually spend. The struggle due to poverty and rejection being a lower-class, especially, was missing even though the story demanded it & at no moment did I feel a bit of sympathy for Nabin Chandra Das' cinematic counterpart. The British Era's Kolkata also didn't feel like "Kalikata" for one single moment.
But not everything is negative as the dialogue writing, editing & music were fabulous but not "sweet." Having a lot of expectations personally might've forced me to go a bit harsh on the film but even on a second watch, the flaws weren't really negligible. Innocence, however, was the brightest point of the film. At the end, the highly potential "Rosogolla" turned into one bittersweet experience & yet, it somehow manages to be below average family movie, especially for the children to teach them never to give up!
