I walked into the multiplex theatre with reasonable expectations from this movie, especially since Irrfan Khan is such a fine and unconventional actor but I have to regrettably admit that except for the food packed in the daily Lunchbox, there was nothing delectable about the movie. The sparing dialogues had far too many lacunae to be filled that even a seasoned movie critic would simply find a waste of time to bother about. And I am not even talking about the ending which is a sad (?) incomprehensible catastrophe! I for one, slept through the movie for the most part or instead concentrated on eating popcorn.
The cast of this movie is just a handful, Irrfan Khan and Nimrat Kaur in the lead. An actor like Irrfan Khan (Mr. Fernandez) who can be imprinted into one's mind even with a line or two in the entirety of a movie was underutilized and made too subtle and repetitive clearly by the monotony of the script. However, in no way does that undermine his performance which is one of the very few good things about this movie. Nimrat Kaur (Ila) did a believable job but either the character or her performance still lacked the necessary depth. Nawazuddin Siddiqui (Shaikh) did justice to his part and added a little hue to an otherwise despairingly plain movie. But when I look at it, all the characters as a whole fell in their places fairly well for which I'd like to give the credit more to the performances of the cast than the script itself.
The story was like a slow moving railway engine that refused to gain pace even after leaving the station for a long time. There were no flaws to it although why the letters started being exchanged seemed quite unlikely of the characters involved. What started of as a friendly mutual exchange of life situations lost sense half way through when Ila finds out about her husband's affair and decided to run away to Bhutan. This too is really fine. The real surprise comes when Mr. Fernandez, who until then, was giving Ila suggestions to have babies to uplift her marriage suddenly wanted to join her and elope(yes, that is the word, not accompany) to Bhutan. We hear song from Saajan playing, Mr. Fernandez jokingly admitting he has a girlfriend (!!), the one-way meeting between them, Mr. Fernandez realizing he is too old for running away, I failed to understand the reason they seemingly fell in love. The script faltered at this point miserably, sorry Ritesh Batra, you didn't get it right. And then the (un)epic ending, before anybody realized, the movie credits started scrolling and I was like "What the heck was all this about?".
For the food, the Mumbai dabbawalas and for Irrfan Khan alone I would rate this movie at 2.5/5.
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