Debutant director Vibhu Puri used to be an assistant to and co-writer of Sanjay Leela Bhansali. Maybe that’s why he calls himself Vibhu Virender Puri. Maybe that’s why Hawaizaada got made. Maybe that’s why the characters break into song at the drop of a sneeze. Maybe that’s why there are lines of candles burning during day scenes. Maybe that’s why you’ll get a splitting headache.

If a good subject could make a film fly, Hawaizaada would have earned a lot of frequent-flier miles. It chronicles the genius of a certain Shivkar Bapuji Talpade, who supposedly put together and flew the world’s first unmanned airplane back in 1895, a good eight years before the Wright brothers got it right. 

But then it’s a big Bollywood film and so the invention of an aeroplane is equated to everything from gaining freedom from the British to earning back your lost love to becoming a worthy son to your disappointed dad. Even failing to pass the fourth standard in school eight times is perfectly fine as long as you can recite lines from the Vedas and fly into the sun with a nautch girl.

Bhansali’s larger-than-life sets, costumes and production design work in tandem with his high dramas but for Puri who is trying to revisit a lost chapter from history the same school of mise-en-scene looks fake and forced. If you can’t believe the world you are shown, you can’t buy the story. The only couple of times you are actually moved is the only couple of times the airplane moves in the air, first to the chant of the Ganesh aarti and then finally to the tune of Vande Mataram.

The performances from the leads don’t help. Ayushmann Khurrana is earnest but struggles to find a consistent note for his character who is supposed to be everything from a slacker to a romantic to a visionary. His innocence shines through but he doesn’t have the acting chops or the star aura to carry the entire film on his shoulders. 

Because the shoulders of the leading lady Pallavi Sharda might be broad and manly, but they can’t carry anything barring the corpse of a dead film. You would think that after the debacle called Besharam, she would be ferried back Down Under but the same producers have been shameless enough to give her another go. That too as a seductress in a tamasha. Kader Khan in drag is more fetching.

Also, almost three-fourth of the film is in soft focus with most close-ups blurred out. For a film of this size and cost, it’s almost criminal. 

Some wise man had described the experience of flying as “hours of boredom, punctuated by moments of stark terror”. Hawaizaada would surely qualify. It’s unflinchingly boring and the leads ensure you look for airsickness bags. 

Pratim D. Gupta
Who should have played the lead in Hawaizaada? 
Tell t2@abp.in