Sunday, August 26, 2012

Bored in Bralaland

A light-hearted, mature love story is what one expects to see in Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi, but the film fails to deliver and disappoints on multiple levels. The naïve handling and mediocre treatment and execution have resulted in the death of a good idea. The love story of two people in their 40s serves up a canvas on which beautiful pictures can be painted, but what you end up watching is a superficial sequence of events in the dull life of two uninteresting characters.

Farhad Parsakia, a lingerie salesman at a local store, lives with his over-protective mother and his old grandmother. After several failed attempts at arranged marriage, Farhad finally finds true love in Shirin Phuggawala – a secretary at the Parsi trust. But, they face opposition from his mother, for Shirin is responsible for the forced removal of a water tank in their home. A water tank she feels is her late husband’s aakhri nishaani, save for her son. The plot, however, is completely uninteresting. The events that alter the course of the story are vague and shallow. The romance between the two protagonists is tedious and the intimacy and cautiousness of a mature romance are missing. And thanks to the very poor scene construction, these gaps seem amplified.



Boman Irani portrays a 45-year-old Parsi man and this, ironically, is perhaps his least convincing role till date, owing to the casual performance. Farah Khan is just plain awkward in front of camera, and with the screen time that she has in the film, it becomes more and more apparent and unpleasant. This, put together with her over emphasised dialogue delivery and vague hand movements, remind you of a fat girl in a shabby school play. The rest of the cast is an ensemble of almost all the known Parsi faces in the film industry, but it isn’t a good amalgamation like we saw in Little Zizou.

A sweet idea that snowballs into a lousy story and turns into a film that can be so easily nullified; Bela Bhansali Sehgal’s Shirin Farhad is a film one won’t mind not seeing. At the end of two hours, you have learnt nothing, felt nothing and seen nothing new. Add to that, you are two hours older.

Rating: 0.5 out of 5

Published in DNA After Hrs (Pune) on August 25, 2012

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