Triple Seat review: This is a two-hour soap opera disguised as a film

Ankush Chaudhari is probably the most bankable star in Marathi cinema right now. He has achieved this feat by meticulous planning, which is reflected in his choice of films, especially after Duniyadari (2013). Though not all of his choices have yielded the same results as Duniyadari, they have all been mildly entertaining at the very least.

But like every long-standing streak, this one has finally been broken by Chaudhari's latest film Triple Seat (2019). This is easily his worst film of this decade and probably one of the worst films of his career till now. 

The premise is very basic: Ankush Chaudhari plays a happy-go-lucky lad who will go to any extent to keep his promise. One day, he gets a missed call from an unknown number which, of course, belongs to our heroine Meera/Tanvi (Shivani Surve).

Though they have never met, they form a strong bond of friendship through their daily phone calls.  But as fate would have it, a minor misunderstanding leads to a twist in the story that changes their lives completely. 

A filmmaker needs to be fairly sure what kind of movie s/he wants to make and this is exactly what is lacking here. Triple Seat is a comedy, dramedy and melodrama all mixed in one, but doesn’t fully commit to any one genre and that’s why it fails to make any impact on the audience. The second half especially gives you the feeling of watching a daily soap. 

Even the writing by Abhijeet Arvind Dalvi is very daily soap-like, especially the dialogues. Actually, the writer seems confused about what exactly he wants to convey to the audience through the film. Sanket Prakash Pawase's direction is fairly standard. Other technical departments such as cinematography and art direction have nothing new to offer.

Too many songs also hamper the pace of the film. At one point, you start feeling like you are watching a music album.

On the acting front, there is nothing special on offer here. Ankush Chaudhari is decent. But it seems Shivani Surve still hasn’t got out of her daily-soap mode. Especially after the interval, there is hardly a scene where she is not teary-eyed. 

Overall, Triple Seat is an extremely boring affair that feels more like a soap opera than a film.