Aiyyaa: Aiyyo Rani, how could you?

Aiyyaa
Starring: Rani Mukherjee, Prithviraj Sukumaran
At: PVR & others
Rated: 4/10
Romances are often tagged to be illogical affairs of the heart, sometimes unviable and a lot of times unsustainable. Aiyya falls into this category without a care in the world. So, if you go looking to making some sense of this very strangely strung love story, you will be questioning many things, including the sanity of such a venture, especially when it is Rani Mukherjee who is at the helm.
Aiyya is not about anything really. It has a very convoluted storyline, the execution of which is equally skewed. Nothing makes sense in this one – neither the over-the-top Maharashtrian family of Rani which has a grandmother whizzing past every camera angle, yelling into the high heavens and baring her shocking teeth in gold, nor the impunity with which Rani’s father smokes four cigarettes in one time, making a mockery of the Censor Board and its stern warning that cigarette smoking is injurious to health. Then there is Rani’s friend who comes across as the main lead of a kinky sex video, without the sex of course! Her brother, whom you mistook for a teenager, suddenly bares his family jewels to her friend and has quite a shocking knock in the bed (and every other place of a house lit like a brothel) singing profanities like mera karara lijjat papad and haath se kaam chala loonga, leaving no fig leaf over his rather bubbly crotch.
Buried in the middle of all this exaggerated lunacy is a love story that Rani tries to propel. Another matter though that you equate her with a beautiful sniffer dog for much of the movie, conjuring up images of her penchant for bad body odours – for, she sniffs the hero’s presence with her nose rather than her eyes! And the hero being portrayed as a non-bathing, unhygienic painter high on drugs and alcohol, you almost always cringe wondering how awful the smells going into her aquiline nose might have been – till you get to know the truth which is pretty much at the end of the show.
Aiyya could have been a beautiful romance – as resplendent and engaging as Rani Mukherjee. But it took matters of the heart with a very stunning kind of mindlessness and put the show right into the mental asylum. You feel bad for Rani – after all it was to be her showcase. She dances as never before – unfolding her prowess at all forms, be it lavani or belly dancing. In fact, it is only when the film recedes into her fantasy numbers, do you relax and let go of your ears. For it is here that Rani is at her best – telling you rather forcefully to put on your dancing shoes and jive with her. However, as captivating as her belly dancing may have been, just an item number in a saner film would have made much more impact.
Because in Aiyya, yeomen effort is required to not get pulled into the whirlpool of cacophonic madness that the movie comes wrapped in. So much could have sizzled like its hero here, but my lasting impression was of the crazy grandmom and her unbearable decibel show! Aiyyo Rani, how could you?
Source: Published The Sunday Pioneer, October 14

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