Where’s The Wit?
There a time when political correctness was not an issue, and comic actors like Kader Khan, Shakti Kapoor and others in the post-Himmatwala era of rapidfire Padmalaya productions, tried to whip up laughs by playing characters with disability—a stammer, limp, speech or hearing impairment, night blindness and so on. Now imagine all those characters in one film, and there’s Umesh Shukla’s misfire, Aankh Micholi.
Shukla has been responsible for unusual and watchable films like OMG and 102 Not Out, both based on successful stage productions. This one too has a stagey feel, with a lot of it shot on one location – a mansion in Hoshiarpur, Punjab, where the Singh Family resides. The men are all named after cricketers—Navjot (Paresh Rawal). his sons, Yuvraj (Sharman Joshi) and Harbhajan (Abhishek Banerjee); the women are Navjot’s daughter Paro (Mrunal Thakur), Yuvraj’s wife Billo (Divya Dutta) and to wrap up is a kid, Goldie (Ricky Patel), the only sensible one of the lot. (Except for Dutta, not a single authentic Punjabi accent between this lot).
Navjot is amnesiac, Yuvraj is deaf, Harbhajan has a severe stutter and Paro suffers from night blindness. Normally, this does not impede their lives in any way, except when it comes to hunting for suitable partners for the unmarried Harbhajan and Paro. Using an online matrimonial service, Navjot finds Rohit Patel (Abhimanyu Dasani), a Gujarati from Australia, who lands up with his relatives (Darshan Jariwala, Grusha Kapoor), to see Paro and also the sister of the Singh’s foe, Bhatti (Vijay Raaz).
Instead of just telling the prospective groom about Paro’s disability and those of the others, they pretend all is normal, which it isn’t because (spoiler alert!), the handsome man Paro and her gal pals had drooled over on a holiday in Switzerland earlier, has a problem too. So every ordinary interaction or conversation is like jumping through hoops—with the actors hamming away full blast. Not only are their antics totally unfunny, they are often painful to watch. Much is made of Paro not being able to see her potential groom, because he only emerges after dark (no, he is not a vampire, that would have been fun!) In this day and age, she could not have seen a photograph or checked his social media account?
The brothers also have to prevent Bhatti from finding out that they hijacked the eligible groom from under his nose, and this track only works because of Vijay Raaz’s performance. Everything about the film is a few degrees louder than it needs to be– acting, costumes, make-up, set design. The biggest drawback is its very outdated look and humour, which even TV sitcoms have outgrown. The racist ending also threatens (heaven forfend!) a sequel.
(This piece first appeared in rediff.com)
