Deepa Mehta made it big with her last two films - 1947 Earth and Fire. While Earth (Aamir Khan starrer) received a lot of critical acclaim, Fire (Shabana Azmi - Nandita Das starrer) met with a lot of fire. Deepa Mehta had planned a triology entitled Water which was to star the pair of Fire again. But this time around, the film met with the consequences of Fire but even before the film could be shot.
The story of the film was based on widows in the holy city of Varanasi around the 1930s.
Instead the director decided to notch up a film like Bollywood / Hollywood. To say it in short, a spoof kind of film or a light-hearted film is definitely not the director’s forte genre.
The name itself gives the feeling that the film would be a fun-filled film. And it even begins in a similar way. Rahul Khanna and his family have migrated to Canada and Rahul and his sister are caught in a classic case of mixed traditions. They are quite western in the society they have grown up but at home are dominated by the mother (Moushami Chatterjee) and grandma (Dina Pathak).
Moushami Chatterjee, btw, in the role of a hysterical mother gives a comic performance all through the film. She faints at any given instant. Especially when she wants the kids to listen to her - a typical Indian mom, eh!
Rahul meanwhile has a firang girl friend who he intends to marry. After enough resistance the family decides to meet her and the grandma asks the mother to translate whatever she says in Punjabi to the girl in English. All this even though the grandma can speak English fluently. ’’This is to scare the girl, ’’ says the grandma.
In the flow of things, mummy ji ends up translating - ’’Where did you pick up this firang bitch from?’’ a question which is addressed to Rahul. Destiny has its way and Rahul’s firang girl friend is killed in an accident. Rahul has been mourning her loss for not even six months that his mother starts insisting he get married and this time around he better look for an Indian girl.
All’s well till this part of the story. Rahul then meets Lisa in a bar where she hits on him and he decides that she can be his pretend fiancee.
At this point on the film takes a turn to where Pretty Woman starts. Lisa being the poor, escort girl falls in love with the rich lad Rahul. A song or two they sing.
Rahul at heart being Indian can’t accept Lisa for what she is. What happens then is the climax of the film.
The songs are pretty mediocre. The choreography is bad. The actors give a decent performance. The cinematography of the film however is very Hollywoodish. But on the score of the story and the script one wishes a director of Deepa Mehta’s calibre could have gone for an original one.