Tuesday, February 15, 2011

#60: Mirch



Vinay Shukla writes and directs this 2010 drama that is a collection of four stories centered around the theme of women sexuality. With an ensemble cast and an innovative narrative style, the stories come at you one after the other in entirely different contexts. However, in what is a departure from common anthologies of this genre, the stories are not inter-related.

The freshness of the narrative will keep you interested as the stories unfold. The 'sutradhaar' is Maanav (Arunoday Singh) a struggling script writer who in the course of convincing a producer about his script takes us through these stories. What veteran Vinay Shukla manages well is to put together a veritable lead cast, most of whom can carry a movie on their shoulders going solo. Boman Irani, Shreyas Talpade, Konkona Sen Sharma, Raima Sen, Saurabh Shukla, Rajpal Yadav, Sushant Singh and Shahana Goswami are formidable in their roles in these stories. Two of the four stories have excellent plot twists towards the end and make for enjoyable viewing. The fact that a couple of the stories are also set in different ages adds to the freshness of the movie.

At 105 minutes, the movie never tends to bore you though seeing Arunoday Singh in between each of the stories is a bit of an eyesore. The lad easily has the best wooden expressions in town going for himself. In a scene in which he loses his cool, he manages to startle you not with his anger but the inept nature of his acting skill. The weakest link in the story is infact his meeting with the producer - the course of which is as predictable as the days in the week.

Mirch is excellent in parts and mediocre in patches. It might not be a rock solid movie but is surely an entertaining watch. It is nice to see Vinay Shukla tackle a serious subject with a dose of humor. Watch it for the liberal idea that it wants to stand for and some good old natural storytelling.

Rating:6.5/10

3 comments:

shilpi said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
shilpi said...

Nice post. Ila Arun was also fabulous in the 2nd story

IssacMJ said...

@Shilpi:Thanks Shilpi! Indeed she was.