Girls Trip:
Two Women on a road trip on a motorcycle– the very idea is delightful. Kartik Chaudhry’s Heer Sara definitely has potential for a female buddy movie– why should guys have all the fun?
Sara (Patralekhaa) has a dead end job as a cosmetics salesperson handing out baby pink lipsticks to women of Indore. She lives with her killjoy father (Arif Zakaria), who keeps trying to sell her precious mobike. Her mother (Shweta Salve) has disappeared when she was a child, leaving behind that bike full of memories. Sara wants to find her mother. She also dreams of a start up for female riders, but funding is a problem.
She discovers that her mother is in Puducherry (the film was earlier called Heer Sara Aur Pondicherry, the old name of the place was way better), but when she plans to sneak off on her bike, her father has sold it.
The new owner refuses to return it, so she steals it. To her annoyance, Sara is saddled with an unwanted pillion rider, Heer (Maanvi Gagroo), the man’s garrulous sister. Heer’s boyfriend Tanmay aka Chuha (Nishank Verma) has gone to get married in Puducherry and she wants to stop the wedding. The guy is a cad who cruelly fat shames her, and ought to have been kicked to the curb, but, well, love doesn’t go by good sense.
The long road trip with the grim Sara and griping Heer, is of course heading for both getting the answers they need, but the journey lacks a sense of adventure that would have made it worthwhile for the audience.
As it is, Heer Sara looks like a first draft. It needed a lot more fizz, humour, and maybe even some stranger danger. What are the chances of two young women riding from Indore to Puducherry, without a single memorable experience– good or bad? The latter seems more likely. Maybe it was a budget issue, or time constraints, or just a shortage of imagination, that the plot remains flat—pleasant enough to be watchable, but not funny or dramatic enough.
Meanwhile, the parents are frantic. There must be a boy involved, says a cynical cop. Then they see CCTV footage of the two entering a creepy hotel and conclude that it is a ladki ka chakkar. India has perhaps progressed to the extent that nobody looks too shocked that two girls have supposedly eloped!
Every two-woman road movie cannot reach the heights of say, Thelma And Louise, still, the idea carries this film through–the perennial appeal of the rebel who breaks out of social expectation. That, and the chemistry between Heer and Sara (“like Veer and Zaara,” Heer exclaims). Maanvi Gagroo has a wonderful comic sense, and a lack of inhibition that allows her to play the silly bits with complete conviction. Patralekhaa does not attempt to steal her thunder, but brings her own strengths to the part. Maybe not dynamite, but together the two of them are sparklers.
(This piece first appeared in rediff.com)
