Review: 'Sankashtahara Ganapathi' runs out of steam

What happens to your life when your hand doesn't listen to you and does what it wants? A fantastic premise for a film, you'd think. But is only this — the less-explored Alien Hand Syndrome (AHS) — enough to hold the audience for two hours?

You realise from Sankashtahara Ganapathi that it sadly is not.

AHS adds a meta reference to the film. AHS is also called Dr Strangelove syndrome, as one of the memorable characters in the Stanley Kubrick film had this syndrome.

AHS has often been deployed as comic relief in films and Arjun Kumar's Sankashtahara Ganapathi sticks to this treatment.

The film becomes tedious and monotonous after a point, as everyone around the central character Ganapathy aka Gani (Likhit Shetty), except his father (Achyut Kumar) and his friend (Nagabhushana) either derides him or makes fun of him.

All the events around AHS are a drag and the film tries your patience.

Apart from AHS, a couple of ostensibly important issues surface in this film, but they fail to make a mark.

Ganapathy is an MBA graduate but his passion for drawing cartoons makes him quit his job. Life then gets tougher, as he struggles to find job as a cartoonist.

He does manage to get a job as a cartoonist at a newspaper, but soon gets into trouble over a controversial cartoon about a minister.

This interesting turn of events is, however, treated very carelessly, and the narrative seems too disjointed.

Gani soon finds love in the office, in a colleague who used to be a classmate. But when he gathers the courage to express himself, he finds that the girl (Shruti Goradia) is already engaged.

Now the question is: can the AHS help him in any way? Can his love be fulfilled?

A comic take on the father-son relationship is a bit of a relief in the film with Achyut Kumar's good performance as a cool father.

Likhit and Shruti manage their roles satisfactorily. Nagabhushana has great comic timing, as he emerges as a fine actor for sidekick roles.

However, with all the effort that has been put into bringing a rare syndrome to the screen, and create humour around it, the film fails to connect with the audience.