The Film: Mumbai Se Aaya Mera Dost
Starring: Abhishek Bachchan, Lara Dutta, Chunkey Pandey, Aditya Lakhia, Yashpal, Daya Shankar Pandey, Akhilendra Mishra and Rageshwari
Director: Apoorva Lakhia
Producer: Vishal Nihalani
Music: Anu Malik
RATING: 0.5/10
Rubberband Films. Mumbai Se Aaya Mera Dost is about electricity coming to a remote village of Rajasthan, thanks to the efforts of a senior visionary who lives there. The old man.s grandson lives in the city and while on a visit to his village, decides to gift a television set to his grandfather. The idiot box becomes a wonder box for the illiterate villagers who.ve never dreamt of such technology, leave alone experiencing its effects. The television, kept outside the old man.s house, acts like a virtual magnet, attracting the villagers, old and young, men and women, who soon get addicted to it.
The evil and tyrant village thakur is incensed by this and feels that the TV set could educate the villagers, enough to ultimately overthrow him as the village.s uncrowned king. Further, the grandson falls in love with the thakur.s pretty sister who, too, revolts against him to be with her beloved. This adds to the enmity between the thakur and the grandson.
As if that weren.t bad enough, the grandfather reveals to his grandson that the truth about his father.s death when he was a tiny kid had been hidden from him all these years, that it was the thakur who had killed him for a flimsy reason. That does it . the battle lines are drawn and it.s war between the grandson and the thakur. At first, the uneducated villagers are scared of siding with the grandson because they fear for their lives. But they gradually have a change of heart and in a blood-soaked finale, give the thakur and his men a fitting reply to end their tyranny.
The base of the story . village electrification . by its very nature is dry and drab. Since among even villages in India, most are already electrified and some even have the facility of Internet connection, the identification would be a problem. Even that wouldn.t have come in the way of the enjoyment of the film but the treatment of the subject is so juvenile that that problem (lack of identification) gets compounded by an uninteresting narrative. For instance, the comedy that could.ve emerged from the villagers first getting shocked by the television technology and then aping what they see on the small screen, just doesn.t come across.
Of the umpteen jokes intended to make the audience laugh, there are barely a couple which may just about manage to get a smile on the face. The track of the guy trying to walk in slow motion and romance like film characters irritates, to say the least. Besides, according to the script, the television is supposed to educate the illiterate villagers but the programmes they are shown watching day in and day out are Ramayan, Mahabharat, Hindi potboilers, cookery shows and the like. Education and entertainment presumably don.t have different connotations in the dictionary of debutant writer-director Apoorva Lakhia.
Besides a weird sense of humour, Lakhia seems to have a weird sense of scripting and direction too. For, what is conveyed through his dialogue is often completely different from what is conveyed through the visuals. The powerful thakur envies the television set of the villagers and often sends his goons to pick it up. Perhaps, he was unaware that if his goons could kill people at the drop of a hat, they could break a television set even more easily. Still, those tryant killers are shown struggling to take away the idiot box like idiots themselves.
The grandson vows to free his lady love from the clutches of her brother (thakur). What clutches? She has been shown strutting around in sexy clothes all through the drama. It is also such meaningless scenes that make the audience disconnect completely after a point of time. The angle of the television reporter covering the violent fight between the thakur.s men and the villagers, right on the field, looks silly, to say the least, if only because it appears that the thakur, whose deeds are being openly recorded on tape, can.t just do a thing about stopping the news crew. The entire track of the grandson.s boss in the city looks absurd, with the boss behaving worse than a buffoon. All in all, the script is poor, the comedy is poorer and the emotions, the poorest.
Given such a lacklustre subject and extremely weak handling by the director, it would be futile to even expect performances of standard from the cast. Abhishek Bachchan is alright as the grandson who gets the television set to the village and ultimately succeeds in getting the villagers to overthrow the thakur. Lara Dutta gets limited scope to expose her talent (which she does quite well) but plenty of scope to expose her anatomy in sexy traditional attire (which she does more than well)!
Aditya Lakhia, as Abhishek.s friend, is average. Yashpal Sharma is okay as the evil thakur. Snehal Lakhia (as grandfather), Dayashankar Pandey, Akhilendra Mishra, Ajay Khamosh and Shubro Bhattacharya are all victims of weak scripting, like the lead artistes, and they lend average support. Raageshwari is at least earnest about her job as a TV reporter. Rajendra Gupta has no role to speak about. Chunkey Panday tries to tickle the ribs but fails.
Except for creating the village ambience reasonably well, debut-making writer-director Apoorva Lakhia is unable to do much to make an engaging drama. Plenty of what he wanted to convey has probably remained in his mind but the paying public would not apply their minds to gauge what he wanted to say. Overall, the film becomes one big lifeless drama without a soul, at the end of which the audience gets the feeling of .much ado about nothing..
Anu Malik.s music is, perhaps, the only plus point in the film. .Saiyyan., .Shaher ka jadoo re. and .Koi bheega hai. are extremely well-tuned. A couple of song picturisations are eye-filling but in an authentic village atmosphere, they look out of place. Gururaj R.J..s camerawork caresses the outdoor locales of Rajasthan with love. Shahid Ali.s action scenes are well composed. Editing is okay.
On the whole, Mumbai Se Aaya Mera Dost is a childish attempt. It is as dry as the deserts of Rajasthan where it has been shot. Since it offers minimal entertainment, it will bomb at the box-office.
