Review – Aiyyaa: Aiyoo! Bachao!

First 20 minutes into the movie, you know that all that glitters are not gold and the next 2 hours is going to be suffocating. Still, there are occasional ‘aiyyaa’ moments that  gives us the false hope but they are very few and far.  On a final recall of the movie, I felt it might have been actually a 2 hours of a deodorant advertisement. After all, Rani keeps sniffing the body fragrance of  the hero, Prithivi Raj and keeps following his fragrance. It is rather love-at-first-sniff!

Meenaxi Deshpande (Rani Mukerji) often slips into her own world of dreams and fantasies filled with Maduri, Sridevi and Juhi Bollywood numbers and escapes from the mundane reality of her life. Her eccentric family that include typical caricature characters – a goofy brother, sun glass wearing, wheel chair wheeling granny, a loud mother and lost in cigarettes and his collection of antique phones father. While her mother parades her tirelessly before potential grooms, Meenaxi wants to fall and get lost in love. She gets a job at an arts college and her love-at-first-sniff ‘aiyyaa’ moment begins there when she meets an elusive artist student Surya Iyer. a south Indian character played by Malayalam actor Prithivi Raj. How the Marathi girl proposes to the Tamil guy while her parents have finalized her marriage to a marathi guy makes for the rest of the story in a much slowed, dragged manner that lets you sigh ‘Aiyooooo’

Though Aiyyaa is Sachin Kundalkar’s debut Hindi movie, he is no newbie when it comes to direction. He has won national awards for his Marathi films both as director as well as screenplay writer. So it is surprising that his debut Hindi movie suffers from lack of imagination and a tacky screenplay. An otherwise potential wakda story that could have been a Meenaxi’s rollercoaster ride of love and marriage is marred by an unenthusiastic, half-baked screenplay that dulls and halts the entire movie barring few scenes.

Rani’s supposed to be a comeback movie suffers inspite of her best effort to lift it. It’s Rani’s show all the way but what can an actor do if the screen play does not infuse confidence and at its yawning best. As far as Prithvi Raj, one of a hottest star in Malayalam films is silenced literally and sports a red-eyed, cold face the entire length, mumbling few tamil words and few hindi sentences in the climax. Apart from that he does the Rani’s body-candy in the Dreamum wakeupum song. Though the surprise musical number is the naughty, raunchy What To Do with Amey Waguh and Anita Date having all the fun.

Aiyyaa could have been a memorable movie but unfortunately you come out Aiyyoo, Bachao!