Aiyyaa

                      Review 1:  AIYYAA

For all the criticism it received, "Aiyyaa" is a great attempt. And a largely successful one too. Yes! I agree, very few people liked Rani going down the item song lane. But Bollywood is Bollywood. And for the record, it is greatly changing. The best part, arguably of course, of these changes is that they don't tend towards one direction. It looks like the Indian film industry is radiating in all 360 degrees, diverging from the stereotype.

Not surprisingly, Aiyyaa is one of these exploratory movies. Seemingly different and subtly similar to the cinema of the nineties. The center-stage of the whole venture is the role reversal. Recall the movies of the young Khan trio or Khiladi Kumar, where they wooed the ladies in every way humanly imaginable. While they sweated and died impressing the heroines, the leading ladies were the "sunder-susheel" kanyas, their virtue being their apparent resilience to the attempts of their admirers. And in the end, they confessed that they had been in love all along.

Come Aiyyaa, and Meenakshi (Rani) is the hero. It is upto her to win her love. While the object of her admiration is deep in his paints, she does all the stalking, talking and spying. She even makes her way into the Dream- saas's home and steals the Dream-boy's shirt. Remember those high tension scenes between the hero and the ladki ka daddy, and the ones when the herione-ka-dupatta would land on the hero's face. Meenakshi is a girl who has grown up seeing such movies. And rather than waiting for her sapnon-ka-rajkumar to rescue her (she lives with a mad family), she takes it upon herself to fulfill her dreams. She is not ashamed of it. She is not apologetic. She is bold and determined. Even though she is committed to Madhav, and because of her family can't break the commitment, she keeps trying till the very end, and not in vain.

Prithviraj does his job in great style. For a role where he has to do the talking more with his eyes than with his mouth, he has done great. And when he does propose in the end, we can't but agree to Meenakshi's  olfactory taste.

The mad family touch works very well to build all the irritation required to project Meenakshi as the lead. But it does get a bit too much towards the end, with  Meenakshi's  brother marrying her colleague Naina after having drunken sex. That part especially spoils the interest in Meenakshi and Surya's first proper conversation.  Somewhere along the line, we may get a feeling that it is a woman-centric movie only because everybody else is so stupid, but then this movie had to be all Rani.
And........ Ye Bollywood Hai...................