Strike One for Warner Brothers' in the Indian film market. This movie is everything you don't want to see in a twenty-first century movie. Especially when a big Hollywood brand is behind it. Kiron Kher, Lilette Dubey and Farooq Sheikh are wasted, to say the least. When you see names such as these in the starcast of a film, you expect big things. The fall from from grace is therefore much harder to take. Not to say that they haven't given their best to the film. They have. But the film itself is such a haphazard, wannabe attempt at portraying life in contemporary India that the end-result is only laughable. (And not in the oh-so-funny way!) The only truly funny thing in the movie is the self-composed sitcom Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Kanya Thi which every woman in the building seems hooked on to. Other than that there is very little to laugh about in the film.
Sheikh makes a very believable Parsi gentleman whose belief-system is steeped in old world patriarchal notions and norms. Kher is, as always, a delight to watch. The gossipmongering kitty group and the younger crowd and the bit about the sensex, however, is just unbearable. Tanushree Dutta does not disappoint in her standing status as bad actor. The character she portrays is downright annoying. The angry young woman who's mad at her mother for having left the father (who by the way doesn't give a teeny-tiny rat's ass about wife or daughter!) Her constant Electra complex gets nauseating and it's difficult to see why Kher puts up with it. Ankur (or whatever the hell his name is) is a flimsy character madly in love with gold-digger Masumeh, working in a call centre and happily recruiting everything that breathes into said call centre. Having got Dutta a job, he becomes the man of her dreams and halfway through the movie there's a cozy triangle of sorts between these three. Masumeh ditches Mr. Flimsy at the altar, and Dutta happily becomes the cushion for his fall. (Note: The reference is not anatomical. At all.)
The sensex in the meanwhile performs an unbelievable series of acrobatics, and, by the end of the movie touches an incredible 30 or some thousand and you find that CNBC anchors pull some really strange shit in their studios. Kher and her kitty group get loaded and Sheikh finally learns how to address Kher as Mrs. Sen and not Mrs. Sex or Mrs. Sensex like he's been doing half the length of the film (which, by the way, gets verrrrry boring after the first two times).
The film's portrayal of woman is cliched and none too flattering. Instead of being a story about the India of today, it ends up seeming like a story written by someone whose only exposure to Indian life has been an overdose of K serials.
So, finally, the movie is neither so much about saases and bahus nor about the sensex; and making sense of it becomes like a weekend homework assignment, which as most of us would agree, is no fun at all. I'd say do yourself a favour and give this one a miss. You won't have missed much you know.
