National Award winning director Sachin Kundalkar steps into the magnificent realm of Hindi films with a film that promised to entertain the living hell out of you. But amidst all the expectations set by the film's promotions, the whacky songs and the wakda propaganda, Aiyyaa ends up being a damp squib.
Aiyyaa is a fantastic tale of a Maharashtrian girl, Meenakshi Deshpande, who is torn between two worlds – her dream world in which she is a fancy celebrity and is madly in love with an artist, Surya (Prithviraj); and in the other, she's a daughter in a mundane, middle-class Marathi family. She lives with her parents, grandmother and a younger brother and always dreams of running away with the love of her life and be free. The film extravagantly tries to explore the fascinating world of this girl as her dreams and realities begin to intertwine. But the amplified treatment and ridiculous extravagance is overdone and absolutely stops being amusing after the first hour.
Rani sticks out like a sore thumb with her awkward and heavily accented Hindi, just like Sridevi's Shashi from a week ago. The rest of the cast blends well as a unit, but the content doesn't allow them to prosper due to being marginalized as secondary characters. Playwright Satish Alekar plays Meenakshi's father while Nirmiti Sawant plays her mother. Both stick to their natural styles of acting and bring freshness to what is otherwise a very cliched narrative.
Inconsistency in the degree of madness is the reason for Aiyyaa's failure to impress. As a romantic comedy, it offers something different, but because of the over-cooked performances and discrepancies in the flow of scenes, you gradually begin to see it as a mindless comedy and that is where it goes wrong. The scene construction and plot leave you wondering how to feel and you end up choosing to feel confused.
The promise of delivering something Wakda is fulfilled only by the music. Sava Dollar and Dreamum Wakeupum have already caused a ripple in the charts and Amit Trivedi's music is the only binding agent in the film. Sneha Khanwalkar's What To Do, a raunchy number filled with double entendres, filmed on Amey Wagh (Nana, Meenakshi's brother) and Anita Date (Maina, Meenakshi's colleague), cracks you up and no matter how unnecessary it may seem, it is something you will take back with you.
Besides that, there is nothing so crucial that needs to be discussed. Maybe Aiyyaa is a film that collapsed under its own expectations and maybe it's wrong to go into a cinema hall with expectations. But on its own, the film has its moments and is fairly average amusement.
Rating: 1.5 out of 5
Publsihed in DNA After Hrs (Pune) on October 13, 2012
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