I can't stand Bollywood movies. The monotonous music, the amateurish dancing... However, this Bollywood movie is a charmer. It has a delightful innocence. In a funny way, the exuberant mood reminds me of Grease.It features a big cast of eccentric characters, much like "The Number 1 Ladies' Detective Agency". The charm of the film comes from the mild-mannered hero interacting with these overwhelming characters, including a giant eunuch.The people are funny because they are so naive and unaware of the effects they are having on others.I builds inevitably to the the big dance number, but not in a predictable way. This is light, sunny entertainment.

Shyam Benegal is a great storyteller..........he has really given us nice movies in the past.After a long time,he has come back into comedy genre.So did he deliver? The ans. is yes!!It is a good good movie.The movie is about a village named Sajjanpur and tells the stories of various residents of the village.Shreys Talpade ,being amongst the few literate people in the village,writes letter for the people.The characters are explained from his perspective. The beauty of the movie is its simplicity. The people,the locations & the series of events happening are quite interesting.You can easily identify with characters if you are well versed with the rural environment. Some of the scenes are really heart warming. The cinematography is quite good.A special mention has to be given to the music which is quite soothing.Performances from Talpade,Ravi Kissan & Yashpal Sharma stand out.Divya Dutta & Ila Arun are also quite effective.Needless to say the direction is compelling. The beauty of the movie is its sarcastic humor.It takes a dig on various social evils (like Ila Arun-Divya Dutta incident) and village level political conspiracies in a humorous way. Go for this movie if you really want to see some feel good cinema..........

ONE OF BENEGAL'S BEST WELCOME TO SAJJANPUR brings caricatures from real life, with anecdotes that would have you either rolling down the aisle or push you into deep thought. It is a mirror of the caste-ridden, male-dominated, superstition-riddled, and employment-less society of north India. The story is set in a fictional village called Sajjanpur. We do not know where this place is exactly, but the characters talk of other nearby places like Gorakhpur, Jaunpur and Satna. Gorakhpur and Jaunpur are well-known places in eastern Uttar Pradesh while Satna is in Madhya Pradesh. So it could be concluded that WELCOME TO SAJJANPUR is a story about nearly the whole of the "Cow-Belt of India", that is, the underdeveloped states like Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, which are, as mentioned above, caste-ridden, male-dominated, superstition-riddled, and employment-less.The main character is a young man called Mahadev Kushwaha (Shreyas Talpade) who is one of the few literate people in this village. Mahadev wants to become a novelist but finds himself working as the letter-writer and letter-reader of the illiterate folk of the village. As his name suggests, he is a Kurmi by caste. His childhood sweetheart Kamla (Amrita Rao), who belongs to the potter caste, is married for four years and comes to him to get letters written to her husband Bansi who is a migrant labourer in Mumbai. Through Kamla's letters to Bansi and Bansi's letters to Kamla we catch a glimpse of the lives of migrant labourers from India's underdeveloped working in India's metros.Other characters include a rich Rajput, Ram Singh (Yashpal Sharma) who is hell-bent on making his wife Jamuna – who is wanted for murdering the girl her son had tried to rape – and through this anecdote we are told about the increasing clout of criminals in India's political system. Ram Singh moves around the entire village on a big motorcycle – a black Bajaj Pulsar – with a gun-toting elderly uncle on the pillion. In Indian states of Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh it is quite common to see such "rich and powerful" people roaming around in big motorcycles and SUVs with fully armed bodyguards. There is a eunuch Munnibai (Ravi Jhankal) who contests against Ram Singh's wife to oppose the candidature of a criminal. A perennially nervous elderly aunt Ramsakhi (Ila Arun) is worried about her born-on-a-Saturday (and hence unlucky) daughter Bindiya (Divya Dutta) and in order to bring her good luck wishes to marry her off to a dog first as advised by shamans and astrologers. The problem? The dog, too, has to be born on a Saturday and has to have half his tail black and the other half white. The fact that her daughter is educated, has a job and rides a two-wheeler does not make any difference to her. Finally, there are the lovebirds. Ram Kumar (Ravi Kishen) dares to fall in love with a widow, Shobha (Rajeshwari Sachdev), and marries her. They are later killed for defying the norms of the society. There is also a street play anecdote in the film where the villagers are shown to oppose the building of a factory in their village. Mahadev, who wrote the play, is accused of having a revolutionary intention and he is scared on being accused so. Armed rebellions have become common in northern India and villagers are often rounded up by the police for supporting the rebels. The Street Play anecdote and Mahadev's fear, perhaps, underline this very reality.With true-to-life characters and incidents brought alive on the screen by a celebrated filmmaker and his bunch of well-chosen actors, WELCOME TO SAJJANPUR is a delightful film which, I believe, serves its purpose well. That is, presenting a slice of life in northern India. It is hard to pick out any one actor as the best for all of them are so good. But I personally loved Amrita Rao's transition from a Bollywood girl to a veiled village woman who dreams of going to her husband who she has not seen for four years. She suits this role. This is the third time after 'Ishq Vishq' and 'Vivah' that I liked Amrita's work. Ravi Kishen's lover boy role is very touching. He loves this widow but does not know how to tell her and he ends up in so many humorous circumstances because of it. And I liked Ila Arun and Divya Dutta. Arun, as the screaming, fussy mother and Dutta, as her motor-mouth, opinionated daughter, will surely have the viewers falling out of their seats.WELCOME TO SAJJANPUR is a very good movie. Its only drawback are its songs. There are not too many songs but the thing is they are not good and they are placed at the wrong times. Only one song – "Sitaram Sitaram", which works as the theme song – is worth hearing. WELCOME TO SAJJANPUR is not the usual Bollywood fare so director Shyam Benegal could have done away with the songs, they just slacken the pace of an otherwise well-paced movie. Everything else is perfect. The sets are really rural. The clothes, the mannerisms, everything. Though quite mainstream, WELCOME TO SAJJANPUR is one of the best from Shyam Benegal.My rating: 9/10.

The driving potential of film is 1/10. I didn't laugh even once in the film. I don't know what people really expect. How can you give 10/10 for such a movie. The film was heading nowhere.The most devastating thing about film were: 1. How was muni bai alive? 2. Why were ravi kishan and wife hanged. This was disgusting.Also there are many of questions unanswered. People's mentality is truly foolish. One of more comments about other films. Especially the top 1000 voters, i don't know how they vote for many films. A person should not view film from critics side but as a whole, just like, DID PEOPLE ENJOY.Do u people think that THE DARK KNIGHT DESERVES a 9.2/10 and DIE HARD 4, a mere 7.8.