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Toaster is a joyride but the problem begins when it tries to be more than a character comedy. Instead of heightening the absurdity, the mystery angle disrupts the pacing.
Rajkummar Rao and Patralekhaa’s production debut, Toaster, is now streaming on Netflix.
ToasterU/A
3.5/5
Starring: Rajkummar Rao, Sanya Malhotra, Archana Puran Singh, Abhishek Banerjee, Farah Khan, Seema Pahwa and Upendra LimayeDirector: Vivek DaschaudaryPlatform: Netflix
Toaster Movie Review: Having built his career over a plethora of roles born out of the humdrum of everyday life, Rajkummar Rao now steps into production. Joining him on this ride is wife, Patralekhaa. Hence, it’s no surprise that their debut production venture, Toaster, is an ode to the beauty of ordinariness. But it also has a frosting of deliciously outlandish plot progression with chaos sitting atop like a cherry.
Toaster revolves around – no points for guessing – a toaster. It unfolds over a one-liner story and it’s interesting to see how director Vivek Daschaudary and writers Parveez Shaikh, Akshat Ghildial and Anagh Mukherjee manage to create a joyride – at least in the first half – out of it. The narrative resorts to humour so slice-of-life and ‘categorically middle-class’ (if Maya Sarabhai had to describe it) that you can’t help but cackle every now and then.
So, there’s a delectable whacky idea at the heart of Toaster. And for a while, the film leans into this absurdity with real confidence. It opens with thriller-like tension where we see a sweaty and scared Ramakant digging up a plot to bury a dead body. He asks a certain somebody if burials happen with the body lying on its back or its stomach as he’s only used to seeing dead people get cremated.
The action then moves back a few weeks where we are introduced to Ramakant, a stingy man residing in Mumbai’s Borivali West with his wife, Shilpa. On his morning run, he steals three bananas as that’s a much better way of life than shelling out money. He argues with a woman in the telephone office as they charged Shilpa an added Rs 6 in her monthly bill. His face falls when his landlord, Glen, asks him to pay his share of the autorickshaw fare.
He prefers to visit Glen’s mother, Mrs D’souza, every morning so that he can have his breakfast for free. The final nail in the coffin is when Shilpa coaxes him to accompany her to her martial art trainer’s daughter’s wedding. Ramakant, much against his wife’s wish, ends up buying a toaster worth Rs 4,999 after much haggling.
To make up for this money, he hoards food at the wedding. And when that wedding is called off, he ends up at their home to get his gift back. And that becomes the root cause of all his ordeals. He’s so consumed by his own pettiness that an appliance spirals into crime and existential meltdown. When this toaster gets donated to an orphanage by the bride’s family, he reaches there.
When the in-charge, Nandini, decides against returning the toaster to him, he steals it. Running parallel to this track is Glen’s mission of blackmailing a politician into paying him crores of money by threatening to leak his intimate ‘threesome’ video. Enters a cop and begins the passing-the-toaster game and eventually a murder or three.
At 2 hours 5 minutes, Toaster could’ve almost made for a crisp entertainer. The first half is filled with bizarre one-liners, crackling humour and bewildering pandemonium. It’s a comedy of chaos and errors but everything works. But it’s the second half that doesn’t quite land as brilliantly as its pre-interval counterpart.
Logic leaves the room but that’s not the issue. The problem begins when the film tries to be more than a character comedy. What starts as a quirky, contained premise gradually morphs into a murder mystery. The gun sequence towards the end feels monotonously stretched out. On paper, this genre blend sounds exciting but onscreen, it feels tonally confused.
These energies don’t really merge but end up fighting each other. And instead of heightening the absurdity, the mystery angle disrupts the pacing. Eventually, a narrative driven by goofy characters and their eccentricities becomes an ambitious mishmash that goes against its own grain and texture. Toaster wants to be a dark comedy, a satire on middle-class obsession and a ludicrous crime caper, but never fully settles into any one identity.
However, credit goes to the writers for bringing out the film’s humour quotient from character quirks. Here, there’s no room for manufactured punchlines and slapstick jokes. And these character-driven gags work because they feel true to the middle-class India essence. What adds to the hilarity is Shilpa’s obsession with Hoshiyaar Hindustan (a play on the title ‘Savdhaan India’) as she tries to unearth a death in their society.
One of Toaster’s strongest suits remains its performances. Rajkummar as Ramakant proves that comedy works best when it feels effortless and rooted in writing. He’s flawed, under-confident and resorts to his wife’s martial arts chop when bogged down by fear and law. He’s also equally hapless, especially as he’s forced to bow down before his neighbour Mrs Pherwani’s fetishes.
Sanya Malhotra as Shilpa holds her own opposite Rajkummar. She brings a quiet eccentric energy and understated ease to the film without ever overplaying it. She leans into restraint, allowing her character’s oddities to surface through controlled expressions. Most of her performance is about reactions, often reminding you of her act in Kathal – A Jackfruit Mystery.
But it’s Archana Puran Singh as Malini Pherwani, who stands out. She’s effortless in both the avatars – a loving widow and a seductress ready to unchain her inner kinks. In a way, she brings in the testosterone quotient of the film, bringing her physical prowess to the fore as she locks horn with Shilpa in the climax. She stands in complete contrast to Ramakant, who represents soft masculinity.
Upendra Limaye as a cop, once again, brings his understated humour. The extended guest appearances by Abhishek Banerjee (Glen), Seema Pahwa (Mrs D’souza) and Farah Khan (Nandini) add a whole new layer of humour to Toaster. One of its silliest but hearty scenes include a drugged Glen mistaking Ramakant as his dead mother. The absurdity of it will crack you up.
Patralekhaa pops up in a brief cameo that plays like a meta joke. Jitendra Joshi and Parnalekha too deserve a mention. But while individual moments land, the overall experience dished out by Toaster feels uneven. Like a toasted bread, it feels crisp on the outside but once you get past that crunch, the centre is slightly underbaked, lacking the edge needed to make it a perfectly satisfying experience.
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April 15, 2026, 12:32 IST
