turning 30 - tossing and turning
In the article, How to pick up a man in the Outlook, Tishani Doshi mentions a theory called grazia, graziela, grazie ar cazzo. According to this theory if you ever see a bunch of girls hanging out it will usually be a composition of three. One is the prettiest of the lot, or the grazia. She needs someone to lean on but she isn’t as pretty as the grazia, she is the graziella. Finally there is the not so good looking grazie ar cazzo which makes the grazia look like a goddess and the graziella a maiden. This theory can be seen in action in any rendezvous place such as a pub or a coffee shop etc. This theory also becomes highly relevant to the movie in context, turning 30
Alankrita Shrivastava is the writer director of this debut venture. The movie has come out under the Prakash Jha banner and is unlike a Prakash Jha movie. Since Alankrita has worked as an assistant to him in movies like Rajneeti I can understand his confidence in her to pull off this ultra-modern tale of a woman turning 30 in the most urbane city in India, Mumbai. I am sure that was her idea when she penned down the story of this movie and carefully selected some actors who are not only little seen on the screen but aren’t really known for acting prowess. The cast are people who are popular in the ancillary stuff to Bollywood. Gul Panag is an established model, very popular on twitter and has done a few movies with her not being the main cast. Purab Kohli started off with Channel V but most people noticed him in Rock On and he can probably pull a movie off. There are other actors in the movie but are not even as well known as these two. Hence we are stepping into an off beat setting that can sometimes surmise us with a great story but will definitely fall short in many departments such as background score, editing, lighting etc.
The movie is about a female who has the most unfortunate twist of fate. Her boy friend of three years dumps her and her boss fires her because he wants to hog credit for the job she has done. All this happens a couple of weeks before her 30th birthday. So here is the female jobless and manless (as the title suggests) ruing every moment of her life. She has two friends (please read the theory on top again) who offer to be agony aunts but we are shortly introduced to their set of problems too. One has a cheating husband and the other has a secret, she is bisexual! So the movie goes on from one tearful moment to the other. After a while enters the second man who is an ex of the female lead. He is trying to get back lost love and she is trying to forget her boyfriend who is getting engaged to another female. In effect both are trying to do this on bed into wee hours of night. The movie has every imaginable cliché, every modern day joke, every modern day comment that gets exchanged in the ladies’ washroom and a depiction of what life is like for a woman who is turning 30 and hasn’t settled marriage-wise in a society such as ours. The movie is also very feminist bordering on the infamous “all men are pigs” funda. Come to think of it, this is probably the only message that comes out subtly and all the other subtle emotions are yelled at on your face.
The movie has a good story, very true and relevant but it lacks the punch of delivery. Gul Panag is ok in her role but she can’t fake tears whatsoever. Let’s face it she isn’t an actor who can just pull any scene off. Purab looks good in his role but he doesn’t have much to do apart from sporting a bare body and some kiss scenes. Siddharth Makkar plays ex boy friend and he doesn’t have much to do either but emotions do not come easy to him. Overall the movie has no effect on you. And just as the bland movie proceeds it becomes blasphemous where the struggling girl turns into a writer because she has carefully accounted her life and that has become a bestseller plus she also wins a case of harassment against her employers.
The movie gives you a feeling of being shot under severe constraints. It is like Alankrita had a shoestring budget to stick to and hence everything had to be done along those boundaries. It’s a movie of mediocre performances, mediocre direction and all scenes showing Gul Panag or parts of her. The movie had potential. It’s a good story that could have been dealt with even better. Some tracks in the movie are hummable but do not blend with the movie even one bit. The background music can shake you off your sleep because some scenes bring out this rock guitar in the background which leaves you wondering as to where did that come from.
Recommendation to watch - Go watch it if you really have time to kill. If you want to watch it some other time I don’t think you can, you will run out of curiosity for the movie and the multiplexes will be tired of running it for open houses.
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Alankrita Shrivastava is the writer director of this debut venture. The movie has come out under the Prakash Jha banner and is unlike a Prakash Jha movie. Since Alankrita has worked as an assistant to him in movies like Rajneeti I can understand his confidence in her to pull off this ultra-modern tale of a woman turning 30 in the most urbane city in India, Mumbai. I am sure that was her idea when she penned down the story of this movie and carefully selected some actors who are not only little seen on the screen but aren’t really known for acting prowess. The cast are people who are popular in the ancillary stuff to Bollywood. Gul Panag is an established model, very popular on twitter and has done a few movies with her not being the main cast. Purab Kohli started off with Channel V but most people noticed him in Rock On and he can probably pull a movie off. There are other actors in the movie but are not even as well known as these two. Hence we are stepping into an off beat setting that can sometimes surmise us with a great story but will definitely fall short in many departments such as background score, editing, lighting etc.
The movie is about a female who has the most unfortunate twist of fate. Her boy friend of three years dumps her and her boss fires her because he wants to hog credit for the job she has done. All this happens a couple of weeks before her 30th birthday. So here is the female jobless and manless (as the title suggests) ruing every moment of her life. She has two friends (please read the theory on top again) who offer to be agony aunts but we are shortly introduced to their set of problems too. One has a cheating husband and the other has a secret, she is bisexual! So the movie goes on from one tearful moment to the other. After a while enters the second man who is an ex of the female lead. He is trying to get back lost love and she is trying to forget her boyfriend who is getting engaged to another female. In effect both are trying to do this on bed into wee hours of night. The movie has every imaginable cliché, every modern day joke, every modern day comment that gets exchanged in the ladies’ washroom and a depiction of what life is like for a woman who is turning 30 and hasn’t settled marriage-wise in a society such as ours. The movie is also very feminist bordering on the infamous “all men are pigs” funda. Come to think of it, this is probably the only message that comes out subtly and all the other subtle emotions are yelled at on your face.
The movie has a good story, very true and relevant but it lacks the punch of delivery. Gul Panag is ok in her role but she can’t fake tears whatsoever. Let’s face it she isn’t an actor who can just pull any scene off. Purab looks good in his role but he doesn’t have much to do apart from sporting a bare body and some kiss scenes. Siddharth Makkar plays ex boy friend and he doesn’t have much to do either but emotions do not come easy to him. Overall the movie has no effect on you. And just as the bland movie proceeds it becomes blasphemous where the struggling girl turns into a writer because she has carefully accounted her life and that has become a bestseller plus she also wins a case of harassment against her employers.
The movie gives you a feeling of being shot under severe constraints. It is like Alankrita had a shoestring budget to stick to and hence everything had to be done along those boundaries. It’s a movie of mediocre performances, mediocre direction and all scenes showing Gul Panag or parts of her. The movie had potential. It’s a good story that could have been dealt with even better. Some tracks in the movie are hummable but do not blend with the movie even one bit. The background music can shake you off your sleep because some scenes bring out this rock guitar in the background which leaves you wondering as to where did that come from.
Recommendation to watch - Go watch it if you really have time to kill. If you want to watch it some other time I don’t think you can, you will run out of curiosity for the movie and the multiplexes will be tired of running it for open houses.
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Over the Hill 30th Birthday Coffee Mug
Good review...adjactly what the movie is all about.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed readding your post
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