Chicchore
(**1/2)
It’s high time a filmmaker in Bollywood tackled India’s alarmingly high student suicide rate (the last one I heard about was of a 15 year old ending his life over a Chemistry exam) and Dangal’s Nitesh Tiwari seems genuinely invested in the growing epidemic with his latest effort, Chicchore. However, a quasi-inspiring plotline and an atonal story structure that oscillates disturbingly between pathos and comedy, just won’t cut it.
Neither will the what-in-the-world Latin song and dance number that closes the film which sees Sushant Singh Rajput and Shraddha Kapoor do the mambo with their traumatized child who just tried to commit suicide.
I’m not kidding. That actually does happen.
Still, there are plenty of laughs to be had and Shraddha Kapoor’s restrained, resonant performance as a grieving mother/unhappy divorcee makes you wish she would collaborate with more Nitesh Tiwaris and Vishal Bharadwajs than Remo D’Souzas.
The end product might be a little too Bollywood schmaltzy, not to mention goofy, for some people’s taste, but Tiwari deserves to be commended for talking about something that the current political administration needs to consider a national emergency.
The Zoya Factor
(***)
I got struck with a strong dose of 90s nostalgia after watching The Zoya Factor trailer as it reeked of both a Frasier and a Dharma and Greg episode that I saw way back when. In the Frasier episode, the sports repellant, Dr. Niles Crane, suddenly finds himself being the rabbit’s foot of a famous basketball player down on his luck.
Likewise, in the Dharma and Greg episode, a baseball-hating Dharma acquires a newfound obsession for the San Francisco 49ers that gradually sees her developing a self-destructive messianic complex – she thinks the team needs her presence to win.
The Zoya Factor doesn’t veer too far away from that although it throws in toxic nationalism, contemporary Apotheosis and a drop-dead-gorgeous-turn-hetero-men-gay Mallu hunk (Dulquer Salmaan) for good measure. Dulquer is a fucking dreamboat here playing a suave and debonair Virat Kohli-esque celebrity cricketer – something we’ve always wanted to see him play in a Mollywood film but sadly never have.
Adversely, Sonam Kapoor plays a ditzy, bubbly Northerner here, something we’ve always wanted her to stop playing but sadly she never has.
The film maintains a loveable, sunny disposition throughout its running time, never ever succumbing to Bollywood histrionics. Even with the obligatory rom-com second act crisis, the film quickly reverts back to its joie de vivre.
And therein lies the film’s strength. Its wholehearted embrace of Christmas lights, bright hues, romantic montages set to dreamy synthpop (thank you once again Shankar Ehsaan Loy) and love in its most plastic form.
That and the fact that film is hilarious – I found myself either laughing out loud or at least smiling, the way you smile when you know a good joke when you hear one.
Inept direction courtesy of Parmanu and Tere Bin Laden’s Abhishek Sharma however is the reason why The Zoya Factor could not be the great film it has the potential to be. The film has no sure footing, scenes are not as tight as they should be and sometimes, we can’t seem to grasp what the fuck is going on.
However, because I have an altogether different rubric for rom-coms, in which I only take into account the leads’ chemistry, the number of times I laughed and how optimistic the rom-com made me feel of relationships, I am not disinclined to say that The Zoya Factor is a great rom-com.
