Salaam Venky movie review: Revathy eschews all understatement in this Kajol-starrer. Every sequence is created to fill you with pathos, and leave you teary-eyed.

What do you do when a film lays out all its wares before you can properly settle into your seat? Within literally a minute of its opening ‘Salaam Venky’ kicks into explanatory mode, telling us how its incredibly brave 24-year-old principal character has spent so many years of his life fighting against DMD (Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy), a degenerative disease which has no cure. And how his incredibly brave mother (Kajol) has fought alongside him every inch of the way. Just in case we miss the point, Venkatesh aka Venky (Vishal Jethwa) is to be seen lying on his bed, chatting sweetly with mum, spiralling into a crisis, being taken to hospital, where his supportive doctor (Rajeev Khandelwal) declares that he is out of danger, but that he will never be able to go home again.

Nothing I’ve told you can be considered a spoiler, because the film is based on a real-life story of a young man by the same name whose demand for an end to his life took a legal turn, and how he didn’t see euthanasia-caused death as an end, but as a new beginning for a number of desperate organ recipients.