A cute fairy-tale of a movie, elevated by the presence of Sanjeev Kumar and Shashi Kapoor.
Durga Devi (Nadira) is a rich widow with a stepdaughter, Shanti (Vidya Sinha), and a daughter, Roopa (Moushumi Chatterjee). She treats Shanti like a servant and is so ill-tempered that she can’t keep an actual servant around for very long. So long-suffering, patient Shanti is perpetually left with all the work.
This movie is owned by Vinay Pathak. He is just fantastic as Bharat Bhushan, a tax auditor with no social skills and a penchant for singing old film songs at the drop of a hat. But he is ably supported by Rajat Kapoor (whom I last saw as the creepy pedophile uncle in Monsoon Wedding) as Ranjeet Thadani, an arrogant, self-absorbed music studio executive.
Ranjeet is married to Sheetal (Sarika), a singer. He has a standing Friday night dinner date with some of his friends where they bring an “idiot” they’ve met to compete in a “talent” competition. The competition among the friends is really to see who has found the biggest loser of the week. Sheetal doesn’t approve of this mainstay in Ranjeet’s life but he refuses to give it up. Bharat is brought to Ranjeet’s attention by a car salesman friend who has been subjected to Bharat’s attentions on a bus trip from Pune (yes, Bharat is singing to him even though he is clearly trying to talk on the phone):
This is not a Hindi film per se but falls into the “crossover” genre; most of it is in English and it was filmed by a mostly American crew, although it stars some of the brightest stars of Hindi cinema. And I must confess that for the first half hour of this film, I was pretty bored.
I thought: I need masala like a crackwhore needs crack!
But I stuck with it, and by the end was glad I had watched it all the way through.
MemsaabStory 