Cold fish
What the Fish
U/A; Comedy
Dir: Gurmmeet Singh
Cast: Dimple Kapadia, Manu Rishi, Manjot Singh, Anand Tiwari
Rating:
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It is one thing to have a brand new, original, hatke concept and work on it to make a brilliant film and it is another thing to have a thread of a story idea and stretch it as much as possible, trying to cram it with as many bizarre situations in a desperate attempt to make the audience laugh. All sorts of experiments are being made in the name of independent cinema and unfortunately most fall flat on their faces, either because of insincere intentions or because they suffer from the 'oversmart' ailment.
Sudha Mishra (Dimple Kapadia) is cranky, cantankerous and loves nothing but her gold fish and her money plant. She stays alone in Delhi (after a fight with her husband, we are told) and is set in her ways. She hates everyone around, especially the ones who want to visit her washroom. Extremely home proud, u00a0this ' maasi' is forced to leave her home for a month and she reluctantly gives charge of the house to her niece’s careless, flippant fiancé. The housekeys go through many hands in the one month that maasi is away, leading to scandalous stories and strange incidents happening right in the house.
The idea at the outset seems promising but the screenplay, direction and dialogues don’t measure up. This film falters in all three departments as screenplay is unbelievable, direction is messy and repetitive and dialogues are unfunny.
Dimple Kapadia is brilliant as the relentlessly grouchy cynical middle-aged woman with trust issues. Even in her one toned role, Dimple gives a sincere, natural performance and she is the only believable character in this film. Rest of the cast and story seems like someone hurriedly stitched together some random scenes with whatever was available at last minute notice.
Even though the actors Manu Rishi, Manjot Singh and Anand Tiwari were pretty decent, their efforts seemed to make no difference to this half-hearted attempt of a movie. The director doesn’t explore any of the stories within the story in depth and just smugly skims on the surface, leaving the viewer absolutely uninvolved. Wish the unique concept was better utilised. A shoddy, lazy film.