Tenida And Company

The only thing you’d want to do after watching Sayantan Ghosal’s TeniDa and Company is to go home and re-watch the late funnyman Chinmoy Roy’s cackling take on the literary character in the 1978 comedy Charmurti. But if you’ve never engaged with the series in any way, be prepared to feel shortchanged with the new release.

Kanchan Mullick plays Teni da, the fibbing, self-aggrandising but lovable dada-next-door from Narayan Gangopadhyay’s stories. All novelties of Teni da’s character are entirely lost in Kanchan’s portrayal. His own personal brand of comedy, which has many takers otherwise does nothing for this role which needs a different strain of humour altogether.

Tenida’s effortless wit, pithy one-liners and easy sarcasm are nowhere to be found in the film. Kanchan’s loud, screeching deliveries are cringe and make the humour come across as garish and quite unwatchable. In comedy, the ‘wrong’ casting can sometimes do wonders for an adaptation, especially if it’s a modern re-telling; but a casting blunder like this one is a disservice to not just the source material but also to a performer as seasoned as Kanchan.

In the film, based on the Jhau Bungalow Rahashya, Teni da’s Potoldanga cohorts, Kyabla, Habul and Pyala are no longer sophomores and are in their mid-20s. They head to Darjeeling for a vacation where they encounter scientist Dr Santra. He claims to have devised a formula that could end global warming. The friends are invited to Santra’s supposedly haunted bungalow after Kyabla, who’s a scientist himself shows interest in helping Santra to make the solution.

But there’s trouble afoot in Jhau Bungalow; Santra is supposedly being targetted by a smuggler, the boys encounter the sari-clad apparition of Santra’s dead daughter and his wife warns them to stay off the property. The production design allows the makers to sell the ambience of horror or unease to audiences and even the frames capturing the hills are terrifically shot.

The film plays up the ideas of lost north Kolkata neighbourhoods, gully cricket and 'parar' rock which are pretty key to Teni da’s stories. So the adaptation could have had more potential if it wasn’t modernised at all, maybe that could have given the movie a different feel or more heart. Some anecdotes have been lifted from the stories verbatim and they don’t fit. The camaraderie between the four friends is sometimes quite funny; Gaurav, Soumendra and Sourav share an easy chemistry with Kanchan so their friendship doesn’t feel forced.

Sabyasachi Chakrabarty gets some room to show off his comic chops, while Ridhima Ghosh doesn’t have a lot to do and Paran Bandopadhyay is under-utilised. The second half moves much faster than the first and the climax feels quite rushed since some plot holes are pretty hard to look past. However, if you love Teni Da and also appreciate literary adaptations, walking into the theatres is not the worst idea to spend 104 minutes.