The makers of Hello Darling were surely at an advantage as their film dealt with sexual harassment at workplaces, something which is common in today’s time and also not to forget, there are handful of films which have tackled this issue. Unfortunately, while the writing is impressive, the execution is damn messy. Result: another disappointing flick from Mukta Arts!
The story of the movie: Mansi (Gul Panaag), Candy (Celina Jaitly) and Satvati (Eesha Koppikhar) work in a fashion designing company. Their boss is Harddick Vasu (Jaaved Jaafery), who leaves no stone unturned to lure young and good-looking girls working under him. No wonder that the trio hate him. By a small error, Mansi one day mixes rat poison in Harddick’s coffee who has to be immediately hospitalized. Fearing the worst, the Mansi and the other two try to hide her crime but they get caught by none other than Harddick himself. He lays down a condition in front of them-he’ll bury the issue and not take them to police if they agree to spend 7 nights with him at his Khandala bungalow! The ladies agree but silently decide that they will teach their lecherous boss a nice lesson.
Hello Darling has a fairly dry narrative in the beginning portions. The film picks up when Mansi puts rat poison instead of milk in Harddick’s coffee. The hospital sequence that follows was unbelievable but grips your attention. And not to forget, the fight between Chunky Pandey and Sanjay Mishra was the funniest sequence of the film although it was one of the most absurd scenes of Bollywood!
However, post-interval, the film just drops to a low and doesn’t pick up except in the track of the NGO dealing with erratic husbands and the mix up that occurs. Several scenes don’t make sense at all. Eesha’s transformation from a small-town girl to a glamorous babe was too sudden. Jaaved Jaffery, while chained, manages to access the telephone and calls his wife (Divya Dutta) who doesn’t respond properly. He could have called the cops because what the girls had done to him was akin to kidnapping! The climax, involving Sunny Deol, could have been great but disappoints.
Gul Panaag was the best of the three girls. Eesha Koppikhar comes next although some of her jokes were not funny at all. Celina Jaitly was alright. Jaaved Jaffery was totally convincing as the playboy. Divya Dutta plays her part perfectly like everytime! Chunky Pandey, who rocked the show in Housefull, does a brilliant job yet again in Hello Darling! Asawari Joshi as Tanya doesn’t get much scope. Seema Biswas as Phoolan Tai was too good. Vrajesh Hirjee was funny although he was there only for one scene. Sunny Deol makes a guest appearance and didn’t seem much in form. Others were okay.
Pritam’s music was plain mediocre. All songs are forgettable and unnecessarily placed. Sanjoy Chowdhury’s background score, however, was decent. So was Ravi Yadav’s cinematography.
Pankaj Trivedi and Sachin Shah have written the story which was great but was totally lifted from 1980s Hollywood Hit Nine To Five. While some dialogues are indeed funny and witty, the rest are unimpressive. Debutant Manoj Tiwari’s direction was disappointing. He had a nice story in hand and if he had treated it well, he could have come up with a better film. Alas, that doesn’t happen!
On the whole, Hello Darling boasts of a good plot but unfortunately isn’t well made.
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