Don’t drink this

There is a huge cup — bigger than the faces of almost all the actors — in the poster of Tum Milo Toh Sahi which also comes in an animated format in the opening credits of the film. Are they referring to Milo the drink, like some kind of a title sponsor? What does the title mean in the first place? Having sat through the 135 minutes running time, we still have no clue.

Wait, there’s a cafe. Lucky Cafe. Where all the characters of the film come. Not necessarily to drink Milo. It’s an Irani cafe. But no one’s interested in the bun maska and sweet tea. All they do is shout. Marital discord shout. College romance shout. Old age shout. Then they show some six-year-old on the hospital bed with stress disorder. No kidding!

Kabir Sadanand, whose first film also had a strange title Popcorn Khao Mast Ho Jao, is in super preachy mode here. A how-to guide on falling in love and saving your marriage and loving your parents, Tum Milo Toh Sahi is the kind of film that would not even let you peacefully snooze in the theatres. The dialogues are loud, the songs are noisy and each actor tries, and successfully so, to be worse than the other.

Not Nana and Dimple, though. Particularly Nana, who can now play these roles in his sleep. As the Tamilian man of manners caught in a time warp, he is delightful in every scene. Catch him dance on the street for the eunuch beggar and ask for money. It’s howlarious! Dimple is inconsistent. Her Parsi act was more layered and studied in Being Cyrus. Still, to watch the Bobby girl fill up the screen with her wide smile after all these years is always welcome.

But to enjoy every heartwarming scene featuring Nana and Dimple, you have to survive Suniel Shetty. And that’s tough. Especially when he tries a never-ending drunken scene. Add to that the dull Anjana Sukhani and the drippy Vidya Malvade. Let’s not even get into that Tanisha Mukherjee item number.

If you are looking for a film about a cafe as a centrepoint for relationships, watch Wong Kar-Wai’s Chungking Express. Guaranteed: you won’t need a Milo!

A few decades late

Sadiyaan is the kind of film that was made in the Bollywood of the 60s, the ones which Rajendra Kumar and Joy Mukherjee acted in. Where the hero and heroine met on a summer camp in Kashmir and love blossomed. Where the doting mother served a glass of malai waala doodh to the son every night and whipped up kheer every birthday. Where the son came screaming in, “Maa main poore university mein first aaya hoon” and the mother’s eyes welled up with pride. Where the lovers planned marriage without even bothering to know each other’s surnames and then spent the rest of the film pining for each other in one song after another. In fact Sadiyaan is set in the 1960s, but is so old school that you feel a couple of sadiyaans have drifted by in those 160 minutes in the movie hall!

With Sadiyaan, director Raj Kanwar attempts to tell a Devki-Yashodha tale of a Hindu mother bringing up a Muslim son in post-Partition India. When the son falls in love with a Muslim girl and questions are raised about his jaat-paat, mazhab and qaum, the Hindu parents set out on a quest to trace his biological parents in order to prove his Muslim lineage. The son is torn between his love for the mother who has brought him up and the one who has given him life, culminating in a melodramatic climax.

Sadiyaan’s basic premise calls for some genuine tear-jerking moments, but Kanwar’s predilection to slip into the weak love story (rendered even weaker by Adnan Sami’s music) and the irritating comic sub-plot, makes it a watch ranging from the boring to the unbearable. What makes it worse are the cliches. The Bollywood rulebook on Punjab comes with a mention of sarson ka khet, lassi, makkhan, alu parathas and bhangra while Kashmir is about the hero spotting the heroine on a shikara and falling in love at first sight, all of which Sadiyaan adheres to the tee.

Sadiyaan marks the debut of Shatrughan Sinha’s son Luv. Gaunt and emaciated with zero acting skills and zero screen presence, Luv is yet another example of a star son fizzling out in his first film itself. Also making her debut is model Ferena Wazeir — the pretty face on the PC Chandra hoardings. While she is lovely to look at, Ferena turns in a nyaka performance that would even put Ameesha Patel to shame. What keeps the viewer from groaning out loud is the ensemble of senior actors. While Rekha poignantly shows the grief and angst of a mother threatened with separation from her son, Rishi Kapoor underplays his role of a helpless father effectively. But it is a restrained Hema Malini, in a significantly smaller role, who shines.

Watch Sadiyaan if you want to see how Anshul Chobey’s camera captures sun-clad Punjab and sun-kissed Kashmir beautifully. But then, watching Discovery Channel or Nat Geo might just be a much better idea.