Laxmii Review: Akshay Kumar, Kiara Advani Starrer Horror Comedy Is As Dull As The Pandemic Induced Diwali Season

• Reviews
• Updated:November 09, 2020 11:18 IST

• Authors: Arunita Tiwari (Editorial Team)
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Diwali festivities have finally kicked off on OTT with the arrival of Akshay Kumar’s Laxmii. Sadly like the dull festive season this year this horror-comedy is a dull entertainer. Laxmii in fact switches gears so frequently between being a horror, comedy, and a drama that film often confuses you where to place it. The movie that set high expectations with a rather entertaining trailer sadly collapses when you finally give it a go despite having its heart in the right place.

Laxmii is the story of a man who doesn’t believe in ghosts and proudly preaches about it ultimately getting possessed by a revenge hungry spirit of a transgender. Asif (Akshay Kumar) is married to Rashmi (Kiara Advani) and the story takes off when they arrive at her family’s home for her parents’ 25 wedding anniversary to seek acceptance for their inter-religion marriage and impress the family in Daman. Near the family’s home is an empty property that is believed to be haunted and when Asif goes there with a few kids to play a game of cricket it sets off a chain of paranormal activities in Rashmi’s home.

Bollywood has never made many big breakthroughs in the horror genre and keeping in tune is Laxmii with all its predictable horror clichés. Jump scares, fast-moving shadows, crying/weeping noises, haunted grounds, and rocking wooden horses - the film has stuck to the very basics trying not to overindulge and keeping it really PG 13.

As for the comedy, there’s hardly a joke that makes you laugh. To give you an idea there’s a scene in the first half of the film where Akshay can be seen talking to few kids telling them there’s no such thing as ghosts and everyone who dies ‘unki atma ko shanti mil jati hai’ ( their spirits rest in peace), at this a girl goes running away because her name is Shanti.

While the first half can aptly be summed up as sloppy that only gets aggravating with the unnecessary insertion of songs, the film finally gets around to making some sense in the second half where the film slips into plain drama mode when nothing else works. We get the back story of an aggrieved Laxmii (Sharad Kelkar) who was wronged all her life because of her gender identity and it is revealed why she’s still haunting the place. Laxmii’s story ignites sympathy towards the plight of transgenders at large but that narrative only rises and sets in a flashback.

Akshay seamlessly switches between Asif and Laxmii, who posses him, doing justice to both parts with equal finesse. Ashwini Kalsekar and Ayesha Raza share a great chemistry throughout the film and walk away with the cake in the first half, their narrative though seems detached from the plot itself. Kiara Advani is hardly there and seems to be wasted away in the project as a very sidelined character.

The direction, editing and writing disappoint and the heavy use of VFX nearly takes away all the bite from the horror sequences.

Laxmii with its horror and comedy has been diluted to the point of mocking the audience it addresses. With its subject line and story that had the attention of the audience from day one, it could have been a tighter and much more entertaining film had not been so loosely executed.