**‘Meerabai Not Out’: Nice Clean ridiculous Comedy! **
In Chandrakant Kulkarni’s ‘Meerabai Not Out’ (reminiscent of Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s ‘Guddi’), the heroine has a secret crush on Anil Kumble (who appears as himself) and a penchant for gully cricket with the boys.
Starring - Mandira Bedi, Anil Kumble
Mandira Bedi has been deglamorised to oily plait, geek glasses, and churidar-kurtas that could have been picked up at Dadar market. She is converted to Shivaji Park’s Meera Achrekar—maths teacher and cricket fanatic. (For those outside Mumbai, Dadar and Shivaji Park are traditional Maharashtrian-majority areas of the city.)
Her mother (Marathi theatre artist Vandana Gupte—perfect casting), brother (Mahesh Manjrekar–unrecognisable) and sweet-natured sis-in-law (Pratiksha Lonkar) worry about her single status, and her fellow teachers at the school ***** about her, since she is a favourite with the students.
Mills & Boon ought not to have intruded into this modak-and-poha idyll, but it does, in the form of Dr Arjun Awasthi (Eijaz Khan), who is bowled over by Miss Achrekar. She is soon converted to contact lenses and trendy hairstyle, but her passion for cricket is not dimmed, and that proves to be her undoing in the eyes of Awasthi Sr. (Anupam Kher). When she fails to turn up at her own engagement because a match is on, he reasons that some people are just not meant for the mundane duties of domesticity.
Director Kulkarni (coming via the route of theatre and Marathi films) is obviously quite comfortable with the middle-class Maharashtrian milieu and this is portrayed with accuracy and affection. Film has some nice scenes, like the cricket duel between the brother and the boyfriend. Mandira Bedi is utterly likeable as Meera and makes no attempt to let her glam image intrude