Shalini Pandey has one of the most innocent faces in movies. She looks like a puppy you want to cuddle; she looks like a child you want to shield. It's easy to see why Sandeep Reddy Vanga had taken her for the role of Preethi in Arjun Reddy. Pandey balanced out the rage, the angst, and the masculinity exuded by Vijay Deverakonda's Arjun through her gentle - almost fragile - presence on the screen. Even her angry gestures – like her slaps, for instance – soothed Arjun's temper instead of raising the testosterone level of the film. In Jayeshbhai Jordaar, Pandey's benignity worked wonderfully with a sweet Ranveer Singh, and the actors gave the comedy-drama a pleasant force that the director, Divyang Thakkar, wasted severely. Maharaj was a waste of everybody's time, and one could not help but wonder if, apart from Sandeep, there is any other filmmaker out there with the talent to use Pandey effectively. With Dabba Cartel, Hitesh Bhatia tells us to keep on waiting. It's not that the seven-episode-long series doesn't know what to do with Pandey's Raji. Dabba Cartel begins by showing Raji as an innocuous wife who runs a tiffin service. The only crime she commits is that she enhances the sex life of other women by offering them an "herbal shilajit" through her tiffin. But one thing leads to another, and she actually ends up committing crimes by selling drugs through her delivery service. Here was Dabba Cartel's chance to visually show the corruption of a pure soul through behavioral changes in Raji. It would have been exciting to see Pandey remove traces of decency from her countenance, which by default whispers, "I am not guilty." Even a mere suggestion would have sufficed, especially during (or after) the scene where she and her team discover the real price of the drug they are selling.
I know people often scream at critics for judging what's there on the screen. However, when what's on the screen looks so unpromising, a critic can't help but inform their readers what a particular show or film missed by chasing mediocrity. By keeping Raji within the limits of morality, Dabba Cartel renders her dull and weak. All Pandey can do, after a point, is look sad, scared, and unhappy. What's worse is that as soon as Shabana Azmi's Sheila becomes an active participant in the story, Raji, and by extension Pandey, gives you the impression that she has been relegated to the sidelines. Perhaps I wouldn't have complained if Azmi had managed to plant herself with authority. Her stern expressions seem to be saying, "Don't mess with me," but you don't listen to her voice. The so-called sternness - the Boss Behavior - yields nothing more than a one-note performance that sores your eyes. Azmi is better in her scenes with Lillete Dubey, as that's the only time we catch her in a different shade. Sheila looks like an adamant child when placed alongside Moushami (Dubey). It's amusing, and Dabba Cartel could have benefitted from more such amusements. At least Nimisha Sajayan, for a while, keeps the show in high spirits. As a maid named Mala, Sajayan is fiery and strong-willed. She doesn't hesitate before arguing with her boss or the boss of the VivaLife Society. Mala even insults a broker to his face when he laughs in disbelief (he is unable to see her as a businesswoman). But Dabba Cartel is so preoccupied with her attitude that she forgets to flesh out her personal life. How did Mala meet Santosh (Pratiek Pachori), her boyfriend? What happened to her husband? Was it a divorce, or did he die? In one of the scenes, Mala buys a TV, and when her daughter points out that its size is big, she talks about changing her house instead of exchanging the TV. But we never find her looking for a different apartment - was she just kidding? Mala doesn't seem to have financial problems at this point in the story, considering she, through donations, admits her daughter to a private school effortlessly. Why doesn't Mala ask Shahida (Anjali Anand), a broker, to help her get a house for a suitable price?
I hate it when a web series displays no interest in expanding its story. Why not use that large canvas to insert more details onto the screen? Mala is assigned the title of manager after a point, but her tasks are executed offscreen. We don't see how exactly she manages the employees or how they are hired for the delivery duty. How is the job posted? Why are only females hired for the position? There comes a time when our drug dealers don't deliver drugs to the clients. What happens to the employees during this period? Doesn't anybody inquire about this break in the business? Don't they want their salaries? Dabba Cartel leaves out or ignores the specifics of the business side (the details regarding the manufacturing of a drug are muted after the delivery of a biryani joke) and focuses on dramatic aspects that produce unoriginal problems, solutions, and conflicts. I won't spoil the "major events," like the one involving speakers, but rest assured, nothing in Dabba Cartel comes across as a surprise. This predictability is matched with images that have neither suspense nor style. Bhatia's direction is impersonal and lumbering. His scenes merely convey whatever's written in the script. They are footnotes that sometimes end prematurely. I didn't enjoy watching a single moment in the series. Everything resembles a chore that needs to be completed just to understand what's happening. It mostly rains throughout the story, which could tempt some people to say things like, "The rain is a character" or something, but I was too distracted by the sudden shifts in weather and time. The water might be falling from the dark clouds in one scene, and in the very next scene, you might end up seeing the sun and a clear sky (we sense that not much time has elapsed between the scenes). When we see that all the lights are on in drug inspector Ajit Pathak's (Gajraj Rao) office, we naturally assume it's nighttime. However, at that exact moment, he's talking to police officer Preeti (Sai Tamhankar), and her surroundings are filled with sunlight (no, they don't live in different cities).
The 'C' in Dabba Cartel could very well stand for Clumsiness. Consider the scene where Sheila saves a drug dealer from the police. While talking to her, the man looks in the direction of a police officer, nods his head, and then runs away from them. It's all very obvious. Still, the policemen are so incompetent that they don't realize that Sheila has destroyed their mission. Talk about inadvertent humor. The scene exists solely to inform us that Sheila misses the world of crime. Well, couldn't Bhatia have dispensed this information with more nuance? Then again, the director has an annoying habit of abandoning things without explanation. A Punjabi couple, for instance, shows too much enthusiasm regarding an apartment that the characters use for their business. How does Shahida handle them? How does she stop them from buying the apartment? A woman proudly points towards a photo of her with Varun Sharma and refers to the actor as Fukrey's Choocha. One can consider Dabba Cartel as Fukrey with women as lead characters (the villain was a girl there; the villain is a boy here). But Fukrey, at least the first part, was funny and enjoyable. Dabba Cartel is as punishing as the sequels. Bhatia doesn't have comic timing or a sense of humor. Dabba Cartel needed someone who could conjure and sustain a wacky atmosphere. When we notice a packet of okra chips and a "shit just got real" card, we feel that these objects belong to another world - one that is blessed with a profusion of amusements. Bhatia, unfortunately, is a literal-minded director.
When you observe Dabba Cartel as a show where the group that tries to stop the production of drugs collides or (unknowingly) ends up falling in love with the one that increases their sales in the market, you sense some promise in the material. The strength, however, simply remains on paper. What could have probably sounded like an explosion in the script goes out with a whimper during the page-to-screen translation. Raji is such a dutiful wife that she makes her husband's dreams of going to Germany her own. His name is Hari (Bhupendra Jadawat), and he initially doesn't take Raji's monetary and emotional contributions seriously. However, when she hands him a sufficient amount of cash to save for the trip, Hari starts giving her more respect, more attention. He even begins to drop her off at work. Dabba Cartel, though, doesn't suggest that this admiration might be coming from Raji's financial power. You know, something along the lines of a gender-flipped version of that saying about men getting appreciation from household members only after becoming an earner. No, Dabba Cartel loves swimming in generic waters. Jadawat is nice, though. He looks a bit like Vijay Varma. It's funny how two men turn out to be more interesting than all the women. One is Hari (he exists in a gray area), and another is Ajit, who gets a whistle-worthy scene when he blackmails his boss casually. Jyothika is superb in the scene where her husband (Jisshu Sengupta) labels her profession as a hobby, and there is a surprise appearance of an actor later in the series who should have infused energy into the story but instead comes across as dry. Dabba Cartel leaves you thinking that it was made by a group of people who got so high on the idea of creating an Indian Narcos with female leads that they high-fived themselves and each other and then didn't bother injecting their creation with vigor, creativity, or wild eccentricity. If the show were a drug, it would have failed to give you a high.
Final Score- [3.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times