Looks like Sonali Cable on paper had some things going for it - an unoriginal but with-plenty-of-potential-story-premise of a corporate company eating up small entrepreneurs in the big money game, the Mumbai setting and a bunch of fairly competent actors. But, as we know by now a good idea is never enough when the script, direction and dialogues are not in sync with it.

SONALI CABLE is a well-intentioned film which has got entangled in its own mess. It's the story about Sonali (Rhea Chakraborty) who has a stake in the local broadband connection along with a politician. She's the 'go to' girl when internet connections fail. Along with her team, she gets the line started within a short period of time.

There is a noble thought of narrating a story in which a big business enterprise flushes off the helpless middle class businessmen. Debates over FDI coming to India has been going on for last couple of years and fear of small business class losing their daily earning source has been one of the vital reasons raised in those arguments. However, Sonali Cable doesn't goes overseas rather portrays the big guns of domestic market taking away the livelihood of the simple people but the situation is nevertheless the same.

Sonali (Rhea), the spunky 20-something owner of one such internet-service provider, answers calls similarly. The authenticity ends here though. Her one-room office, four wires, shiny modems and two computers are all that stand between a big bad wolf Corporation named 'Shining' and broadband world domination. That's all the tech jargon we're exposed to in a film allegedly about Internet turf wars.

Charudutt Acharya's Sonali Cable is single-mindedly focused on the problems it wants to highlight: corruption in our system and encroachment of big, rich players in the local market. Unfortunately, the script, selected for the Mumbai Mantra-Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab 2012, fails horribly by the time it reaches the execution table.

A bombshell. Name Sonali Tandel. She runs a business of internet cable in Mumbai's colonies with some energetic youngsters. She has a sleeping partner local leader Meena Tai. Everything is going good. But then enters a corporate man Waghela who wants to takeover local businesses. His only obstacle is Sonali Cable. Sonali and his aides gear up for the fight against Waghela and Meena Tai's US return son Raghu also joins them.

The evil corporate's job is to gobble, grunch and munch. The feisty underdog's is to stand up and be counted, and refuse to become easy meal. 'Sonali Cable' has a nice premise, especially relevant in this age of the permanently wired universe, soulless corporations, and the scams that come out of acquiring spectrum. But its execution is much less so.

Half-way through this interesting film about cable connections and online predilections, the script audaciously bumps off the most endearing character. And I thought that to be the end of the film's engaging quotient. But no. Sonali Cable persists on grabbing your attention by its collar, pulling it along into a world of curiously convincing characters whom you may or may not bump into while traveling in the local trains of Mumbai. But they sure as hell look like real people, except for the central character.