Film: What The Fish
Starring: Dimple Kapadia, Vishal Sharma, Sumit Suri
Director: Gurmmeet Singh
Producer: Kumund Shahi Malik, K.R. Harish
Banner: Viacom 18 Motion Pictures
Music: Amartya Rahut ,Indraneel Hariharan
Starring: Dimple Kapadia, Vishal Sharma, Sumit Suri
Director: Gurmmeet Singh
Producer: Kumund Shahi Malik, K.R. Harish
Banner: Viacom 18 Motion Pictures
Music: Amartya Rahut ,Indraneel Hariharan
So okay. Comedies are hard to
sustain for more than an hour...and yes, this one does over-run its
playing time by 20 minutes, although it's just about a 100 minutes in
length. And that's a 100 conveying sustained satirical strength. The
quality of the humour and the context of the characters' comic tangles
is, on the ha-ha-ho-ho whole, adroitly maintained, sustained and
executed.
So here goes. A cantankerous old woman
in Delhi, Sudha Mishra (Dimple Kapadia, delightfully over-the-top)
leaves her home and its two specific properties namely the pet fish and
the money-plant, in the care of her couldn't-care-less niece, who
promptly hands over the responsibility to her ever accommodating
boyfriend.
The rest of this wackily wound-up comedy
records the relay race styled exchange of the old woman's home's care
from one set of noisy eccentric characters to another.
Besides its immensely warm underbelly,
what captures your attention is the originality of the material. Here is
a comedy that seeks no reference points from foreign sources, does not
lean towards Hollywood for its humour quotient.
No, this is not a take on Chris Columbus' "Home Alone".
Set in Delhi, though not compulsively
taken up with taking us on a tour of the capital, the narrative gets its
energy from the robust telling of a reasonably sturdy comic situation.
The wit is never derivative but constantly probing suburban
eccentricities.
The character of the Haryanvi lout Hooda
(Mithun Rodwittiya), who plays patron-lover to a Mary Kom lookalike
boxer from Manipur, would be a laughing stock were he not so desperately
pathetic.
The performances add to the narrative's flavourful texture.
The actors, young and old, are cleverly
cast. While Dimple's cranky act is expectedly winsome (when has this
actress not been a winner?), Manu Rishi as the neighbourhood lech who
seduces his young friend's naive fiancee (Deepti Pujari) when she is
home alone puts in the other outstanding performance.
Manu is an actor who knows his character's sleazy underbelly and nails it unabashedly.
There are other interesting characters,
like the young vain Haryanvi boxer Rajpal(Vishal Sharma) who likes to
crossdress in the night and performs a kathak mujra in the isolation of
Dimple's mauled and misused abode.
And Manjot Singh as a pet shop owner, whose sales of a particular variety of pet fish escalate, is also in-sync with the satire.
Come to think of it, the actors are all
delightful, careening from the comic to the crazy without losing a beat
or succumbing to the pressures of the heated humour.
I found portions of the comedy to be
undernourished and over baked. The climactic scream ended up as a
shuddering whimper. But that didn't take away from the swing and the
sting of the frenetic chuckle-worthy happenings.
Quirky, capricious and cute, "What The
Fish" is a warm little concoction with pockets of endearing eccentricity
and feyness. The midriff of the narrative sags. But there are ample
measures of giggle-inducing characters hiding their own ridiculousness
in the garb of urbane casualness.
Gurmmeet Singh keeps the proceedings frothy and even paced.
You may not come away with much of a
message to take home. But by jove, you will never ever leave your home
in the care of any relative after this.
