Viewed: LUCK BY CHANCE

The Akhtar family introduce a new talent of their family, Zoya who makes an impressive debut with her directorial venture that focuses on the struggle of two actors and takes a peek in the Hindi film industry.

The story is of a girl (Konkona Sen) who does bit roles hoping to land a meaty role in a big production who falls in love withs another struggler (Farhan Akhtar). As the story tracks their journey, it also showcases parallel tales of a producer (Rishi Kapoor), ex-starlet (Dimple Kapadia) and her daughter (Isha Sharvani) and an insecure star (Hrithik Roshan, who has a neat role in the film.) It attempts to highlights various film 'arenas' and the reality behind the scenes.

The Akhtars anchor on their strength and bring-in whole lot of stars in the film. Zoya does a neat job of eliciting good performances. She tries a brave thing by venturing into parallel narratives; the film becomes multi-protagonist kind of a story, and at times struggles as it delves into caricature representations; it perhaps would have been more effective to travel more with the leads than with trying to show everything.

It does show effectively the lives of all the main characters but likely a simpler portrayal would have been more effective. It's a challenge to balance all the conflicts and track the various arcs, which the film endeavors to do. Though the film after starting very well takes a dip of sorts, eventually it does work. In a way it's scary to see this industry and imagine how difficult it could be to break-in into this league.

It is a fresh kind of a flick. One viewing is definitely worth it. We have another new talented director making a debut and hopefully we shall see more quality works in the future. Though I do wonder why the film was stuck for many years for want of a lead actor; though Farhan is fresh in a way, he is not really 'new', I wonder why couldn't they be brave and go for a new actor. It looks even more scary if guys like Excel Productions are not willing to walk the line with a totally new face in this 'new'-look industry that is supposedly open now for experimentation, or maybe....there is extreme dearth of fresh talent in the country.

Though with their previous production, Rock On, they perhaps did take a kind of a 'risk'. Though I am not sure if exploring new themes is actually a risk. But it's interesting to see that this film was stuck for want for a 'star' and that's one of the points, which this film raises! Well, as long as we don't take chances, the more we shall bank on luck.


Screenplay: Zoya Akhtar
Director: Zoya Akhtar

Rating ***

[Max ****]