Aisha

I was really really looking forward to catching up with the first day show of Aisha. I had been listening to the music for the past 3 weeks. Set up Aisha songs as my caller tune coz the music was really good. Very typical Amit Trivedi. A nice mélange of several genres of music. 6 neatly packed songs into what seemed to be a fresh and exciting movie to watch. Professional commitments and then a week long illness kept me away from the screen till last evening. The movie started off as I had predicted with the foot tapping chick number – By the Way (Anushka Manchanda). But what started off promisingly and sustained the momentum all through the first half kind of just fizzled out into – I would be harsh if I were to call it a damp squib – but it almost got there.

Aisha Kapoor (Sonam A Kapoor) is your average rich semi spoilt kid from South Central Delhi whose Dad (M K Raina) is rich enough to buy her a Volkswagen Beetle. Probably as her 21st birthday gift or something. She is bestest friends with Pinky Bose (Ira Dubey) who is a self confessed man lover but also commitment phobe – I already like her . She is also close friends with Arjun Burman (Abhay Deol) who has kind of grown up with the family. Arjun is now an investment banker – I sometimes find it extremely difficult to digest these fancy professions which get credited to characters in movies, lead or otherwise. Do the people involved in making movies even know what goes into the life of an I-Banker or what does an investment Banker’s schedule look like? Or does an I-Banker even have the bandwidth after her/his 18 hour work days to spare time on some random weekend for a polo game? Maybe I am wrong but my impression of these corporate slaves is far different from what was shown.

Nevertheless, completing the entire shebang are Randhir Gambhir (Cyrus Sahukar), Aarti Menon (Lisa Haydon) and Dhruv Singh (Arunoday Singh). Randhir is the usual rich bum whose dad owns a massive sweets business. He is totally smitten by Aisha. Aarti is the NY return colleague of Arjun who is “just friends” with him. And Dhruv is the nerd grown hunkie. Son of Col. Singh (Yuri Suri) who has just married Aisha’s Maasi – Chitra (Anooradha Patel).

Now Aisha is fully capable of finding herself a job but as I had mentioned earlier, she is the semi spoilt rich kid. Semi spoilt coz she restricts herself to spending 53 grand on her dad’s credit card without batting an eyelid. 53 grand is like peanuts for the average rich Delhi household. In most cases the response would have been, “Bas Itna hi??? Jawaan Beti hai, aaj nahin kharchegi toh kab karegi. Aur itna paisa kis liye kamaaya hai”. She instead, indulges herself in what she calls – Social Service i.e. setting up couples together. She claims to run an event management firm but honestly the movie does not give any indications of this other than her claiming it. Her current pet project is Shefali (Amrita Puri) who has come to Delhi from Bahadurgarh with the sole intent of getting married. The movie revolves around Aisha’s attempts to get her hitched first with Randhir and then with Dhruv. In between all of this there is Saurabh (Anand Tiwari) who is smitten by Shefali but thanks to Aisha is not allowed to even get close simply because he is too middle class. Arjun doesn’t like this interference one bit and keeps giving Aisha a piece of his mind which is to no avail.

Aisha is an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma. I have read Emma a really long time back and tried to get my hands on the book so that I could go thru it once again before I saw Aisha but guess what – out of stock. I somehow don’t think it is due to Aisha. I do have a vague recollection of the book and I think the story is quite similar and Rajashree Ojha & Devika Bhagat (Screenplay) have done it some justice. Most importantly, they have credited Jane Austen with the script and story which is very unlike most Bollywood production houses. I guess it was Anil Kapoor’s attempt to increase his credibility in Hollywood.

Performances are quite acceptable. Sonam A Kapoor has increased her level just that one bit in her 4th movie. Abhay Deol as usual is completely at ease in front of the camera. Ira Dubey too has done quite a good job as the forever spiteful, Randhir hating, Pinky Bose. Stand out performance is by Amrita Puri who in her debut movie who has done full justice to the role of Shefali from Bhadurgarh. My friends from Delhi would agree with me when I say that she has actually captured the nuances of such a character very very well both in demeanour as well as dialogue. Good show Amrita.

The editing, consistency and sound editing are however atrocious to say the least. Come on guys at least ensure the movie is finished well. Could have easily gone upto 6 on 10 with proper finishing and some cuts in between to ensure the movie was of the right length. Thoda overboard chala gaya. Khinch gaya. 4 on 10 final verdict.