Friday Streaming - Helmet on Zee5 puts the hell in helmet

Directed by Satram Ramani, Helmet touches upon a completely untouched topic of conversation in India aka contraception. But that's all it does!

An extremely overpopulated country congested with those who feel zero shame in having big families but feel shy or ashamed at the mention of birth control; Yes this is precisely the crux of the problem and also the plot of Helmet on Zee5! In spite of leading with such a promising concept, this film turned out to be an absolute snooze fest!

Cast - Aparshakti Khurana as Lucky had absolutely no expression throughout the duration of this film. Pranutan Bahl as Rupali had a terribly inconsistent character graph. Rupali comes across as a boisterous and bold woman in the opening scene and immediately turns into a damsel in distress just 15 minutes into the movie. Ashish Verma as Minus played a role I didn't quite understand. What was funny about being unable to hear? Birth control plays a more consequential role in this movie than all the characters put together.

Storyline - This story follows Lucky, a wedding singer who barely gets by with his full-time job. He falls in love with Rupali and walks up to her father to ask for her hand. With absolutely nothing working in his favor, he gets thrown out of Rupali's house as well as his job. In an attempt to make quick money, Lucky robs a delivery truck along with two of his friends, in the hope of selling electronic gadgets at a cheaper price. As his luck would have it, all of these boxes contain condoms, a commodity nobody seems to be comfortable buying even from the chemist in what only looks like Banaras. What follows is a partly interesting and partly cringe-worthy hour of these three friends trying to sell condoms in Uttar Pradesh while wearing helmets to remain anonymous.

What the trailer here!

What I liked - Helmet tries to revolve around safe sex and normalizing the use of condoms without judgment and embarrassment and that isn't something that's discussed in our own homes, let alone mainstream media. It's terribly rare for a film to mention that sex workers serve an important role in society and this movie does that!

What I didn't quite like - This movie has no flow, the end just leaves you wondering what's going on. For a movie that daringly decided to talk about sex without protection, it didn't do justice to everything it could've been. The plot remains totally undiscovered even though it had so much potential what with stolen goods worth lakhs and lakhs of rupees and selling contraceptives under the table in India. I'm confused about what was funny in this comedy, uninspired acting, inconsistent character graphs, or the terribly boring dialogues.

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