Bollywood actress Madhuri Dixit recently made her Marathi debut with Bucket List on May 25. The film, directed by Tejas Vijay Deoskar also features Renuka Shahane, Sumeet Raghavan.
Interestingly, it's like Madhuri Dixit doing Sridevi's English Vinglish where both, the female leads play a Marathi housewife who at some point decide they want to explore experiences outside marriage, children and home. The plot revolves around the husband who is a shadowy figure played with confident persuasion by actors who know how to flesh out their sketchily written roles. Adil Hussain and Sumeet Raghavan are interchangeable in English Vinglish and Bucket List. And they are both equally replaceable with Vinod Mehra if this film had been made in the 1970s which it easily could have been.
Sadly, the well-intended but fractured excessively sweetened film about a housewife living out a list of daring by her conservative standards fantasies is a bit of a letdown. For one Bucket List seems more about the actress Madhuri's than her character Madhura's bucket list.
Madhuri's adventures seem embarrassingly tame. As the ever-beaming Madhura, Madhuri occupies almost every frame. Though he ticks off all the boxes in the "Sallu Ki Wishlist" roster of a working-class housewife's need to fly, she does nothing here that she hasn't done before. Madhura is still a delight to watch. But we didn't need this film to prove it.
Bucket List seems to have been conceived only to flatter its leading lady. In the process, talented actors like Renuka Shahane, Shubha Khote, Dilip Prabhalkar and Sumedh Mudgalkar(giving a heartfelt performance as the heart donor's twin brother) barely get a chance to come out of the shadows. When they do, we get an inkling of what this film could have been if it had its heart in the right place. Or maybe too much heart and very little mind is the problem.