Rating: 3 on 5

Sankat City is a roller-coaster ride all the way. The minute you think the pace is going slack, something hilarious happens that makes you change your mind. This sankat is worth risking.

The plot is quite convoluted to write but easy to understand when you watch it. There is a film producer (Manoj Pahwa), a down and out actor and his duplicate (Chunky Pandey), a bombshell crook Mona (Rimi), a car crook (Kay Kay) and his whacko uncle (Dilip Prabhavlkar) , a gangster (Anupam Kher), his driver (Hemant Pandey), a Guru ala Baba Ramdev (Veerendra Saxena) and a few crore rupess involved.

Sankat City is an independent flick that explores the underbelly of Mumbai, the nexus between Bollywood and the underworld, the importance of luck by chance, right timing and how one stray event that you think cannot affect you, alters your life. It's about how everything is inter-connected.

The characters are colourful and well-etched. Kay Kay is fascinated by fish and treats them like his children. Anupam Kher's gangster character has a funny dialect. Baba Ramdev keeps his love for men and meat in the closet (How ironical given the real Baba Ramdev's recent stance on homosexuality). Kay Kay's uncle can only sleep under a jittery jeep in his rundown garage. The Ganpatrao character is a tribute to Paresh Rawal's Baburao act in Hera Pheri. The whole jing-bang of mad people seem to have been hired for his film.


Kay Kay shines in his role of quick thinking car thief who is quite a softie. Is there any character that he cannot play brilliantly?
Rimi fits the role of your-clever-and-manipulative-girl-next-door-with-a-heart. It's similar to what she did in Johnny Gaddaar, where she was the only heroine but her acting is better in this film.She has a role.

Anupam Kher is intimidating enough. Manoj Pahwa, Sanjay Mishra, Dilip Prabhavalkar, Chunky Pandey, Yashpal Sharma and Veerendra Saxena enact their parts well in this bumbling comedy. If Khosla Ka Ghosla made sense, this is way up with that.

The film is a clever, situational comedy, not mindless slapstick trash. Sankat City doesn't have fancy production values yet the production design of a jazzy bar, a run down garage, a down-and-out producer's office is authentic enough. They have even shot at a garbage dump. It takes you to the shady side of the city that you normally wouldn't visit.


Pankaj Advani's debut film is entertaining. The guy wrote Kabhie Haan Kabhie Naa and he surely has a knack for dialogue-based comedy. It would be interesting to see what he comes up with next. This comic caper is total timepass and a rainy afternoon well spent.

Go for it, and try not to take a 'shortcut' to Sankat City.