Cast: Sushmita Sen, Randeep Hooda, Naomi Campbell, Drena DiNiro, Rati Agnihotri, Deepal Shaw
Director: Manish Gupta
This film garnered all the hype when it was in under production because this was Sushmita’s first attempt to go international. It’s an Indian film in English with some of the popular names from Hollywood. Therefore – the hype. It also had an exotic name Karma aur Holi. The exotic starcast, the effervescent Sushmita Sen, Naomi Campbell, Suchitra Krishnamoorthy, Drena DiNiro etc.
This film desperately wanted to fall into the category of Fire, Monsoon Wedding, Bend It Like Beckham, Bride and Prejudice etc. But what fails?
The story is simple – Meera (Sushmita Sen), a financial consultant at Wallstreet cum Yoga teacher is the wife of a magazine editor Dev (Randeep). Mira has one problem – she has been trying for long but she couldn’t conceive a child. Dev has a problem – his magazine Indian Voice is sinking and he needs a loan to save it out. They invite close friends and relatives over for Holi celebrations and all of the tipsy partygoers in some way or the other get involved in each others’ lives and in the strange turn of events they end up to confessing their innermost secrets that have never been revealed.
Well… this much sounds interesting… doesn’t it? But it doesn’t turn out to be so. The story goes well in the first half when there are so many characters to establish, so many stories to begin and take them to that one peak. One would expect some bizarre secrets about these characters that they had not even imagined and how those bizarre secrets would change their life after the confessions.
Unfortunately the director ends up revealing things that we as viewers already knew but characters as a part of the plot did not know. What happens? The suspense is built and when the time comes for an explosion all we hear is dim fart!
The simple confessions that the characters make bring a change in their life the next morning as Holi celebrations begin and everyone has a reason to forget about their problems and enjoy life.
There was so much scope for adding drama to the human emotions, depicting their entangled relationships and mindsets. There was only a trailer of all these but no drama. Result, the dish could that could have tasted good with all the ingredients, idea, garnish and name turned out to be BLAND.
Its classic case of bad plot development and bad writing spoiling the good characterization. Sushmita Sen does justice to her role, thankfully doesn’t put up a fake accent. Randeep Hooda is OK. Naomi Campbell is a terrible actress and so is Deepal Shaw. Suchitra Krishnamoorty was good but her character needed some more depth. The director plainly could not extract performances out of the actors.
Go for it if you had missed Sushmita Sen on screen otherwise you can give it a miss!