Umm... maybe it sounded funnier in his head when he was in his Dream-um. Or on paper-um. But on film-um, Sachin Kundalkar's exhaustingly long Aiyyaa makes you go ‘Aiyyoo,’ Kill Me Now-um.
Wake up-um, makers... and smell the oothappam. This is not a plot-um that lends itself to be watched for this long-um. It's as much fun as getting rid of the chewing-gum that's caught to the bottom of your shoe.
Yes, so unless you think that adding all those Ums or Aigas or Aiyyaas automatically makes any line funny, don’t beat yourself over it.
The probl-um with this inexplicably bad experiment is that everybody wants to be a funny character. Madcap works best when backed by solid writing. Not hokum.
Though you may chuckle a couple of times the first time you meet the characters, after a while, you realise that in Aiyya , the character sketch is the plot. For all practical purposes, every character just sticks to the sketch and improvises without doing nothing to push a story forward. Simply because there is no story.
Rani Mukerji plays Meenakshi, a librarian fighting off efforts from her parents to get her married and she is instantly smitten by a mysterious Tameel-speaking angry young man. She remains that till the end, doing nothing but following him and dreaming about him.
Her friend Maina (Anita Date) is this dentally challenged big-mouthed freak who dresses up with ‘Crime Scene: Do Not Cross’ ribbons, Halloween and porn film costumes. She does that scene after scene.
Her brother Nana (Amey Wagh) is a dog-loving wastrel who does nothing. He does nothing throughout.
Her mother (Nirmiti Sawant) keeps introducing her to different suitors. Her blind-bling sporting grandmother in a motorised wheel-chair mouths inanities all through. And the father smokes cigarettes, three at a time. So every time you see these characters, they do a variation of what they did the first time we saw them. Very random.
Who cares about plot progression as long as there are Dirty Picture like songs inspired by Midnight Masala?
Thankfully, this isn't a film that is offensive only to South Indians. It's offensive to anyone with a brain that works.
It takes someone who has no idea about the states and cultures to cast a Bengali girl as a Maharashtrian and a Malayalam star as a Tamilian in a Hindi film where their idea of a Tamil song features Chiranjeevi, the Telugu superstar! How difficult is to cast a Maharashtrian actress, a Tamil actor and get a Tamil song?
But your heart goes out to Rani Mukerji and Prithviraj who put in their 100 per cent, even if they are made to do the silliest things. They lend the film a lot of grace and charm. And then, there are Amit Trivedi's hummable songs. But for these minor pluses, there's nothing in this film seems done by professionals.
Boredom continuum.
