Aiyyaa Movie Reviews

Till a few years ago, Bollywood was known for churning out hero-centric movies. The leading ladies were treated as mere props or eye candy in most Hindi movies. That's not all, heroine-centric themes were considered dicey, since not many were ready to invest their crores on stories that centred around female protagonists. But 2012 has made the naysayers chew their words. The year belongs to those gutsy film-makers and of course, the enterprising ladies

Comeback, comeback...and later more comebacks! B-town is suddenly blessed with the revival phase of yesteryear glam divas and AIYYAA is just one of such endeavour. After 'videshi' treatment of our very 'desi' actress Sridevi in highly acclaimed ENGLISH VINGLISH, it's time of commercial revival of Rani Mukerji in AIYYAA, a flick that promises hilarious fantasy journey of simple Maharastrian girl in most amusing way. Amit Trivedi, a name associated

The Deshpandes are no ordinary brood. And Aiyyaa is no ordinary film. Wildly wakda (read twisted) in more ways than one, it is a film that defies definition. It careens from the dreamy to the delirious, the realistic to the raucous, and the perfectly logical to the utterly nonsensical as it turns many a time-honoured convention of Hindi commercial cinema on its head. Many might find its loud, outré storytelling style somewhat difficult to comprehend

It takes courage to present something never-done-before on the larger-than-life canvas of the big screen. And surprisingly debut director (at least in Hindi films) Sachin Kundalkar shows this trait with great effect in his film Aiyyaa. Hats off to an established star, Rani Mukerji, for showing such conviction in Kundalkar’s experimental vision. This truly is a good time for Hindi cinema. Only recently Gauri Shinde displayed fantastic finesse and subliminal storytelling

There’s nothing new about love at first sight. Movies and books have been done to death on it. But love at first sniff? When she’s not escaping to her Bollywood dreams, Meenakshi (Rani Mukerji) has a tough job working as a librarian while trying to keep (what’s left of) her sanity with her dog loving brother Nana, marriage obsessed mother, cigarette addict father and grandmother with gold teeth who vrooms around the house in her wheelchair

It's love at first smell for college librarian Meenaxi Deshpande (Rani Mukherjee), who falls hook line and sinker for brooding artist Surya (South Indian star Prithviraj) the moment she first catches a whiff of him. Meenaxi, the protagonist of writer-director Sachin Kundalkar’s bizarrely fascinating Aiyyaa, is a middle-class Maharashtrian girl with a heightened sense of smell, and a tendency to slip into a dream-like fantasy world of Bollywood numbers

Arrey Deva, hey kai? Kinky Kanda-pohey topped with sexy sambar-chutney? Of course, this can't beat the madness of the dramatic Deshpandes. A family of 'weird-Ums' - With aai, baba, bhau, aajji and dream-girl Meenaxi Deshpande ( Rani Mukerji), who's truly the Queen of her filmi fantasies (she's revisited every dream sequence as Sridevi, Juhi, Madhuri). So what if this D-family is busy arranging 6pm and 9pm shows of 'Meet The Bride'

It’s time for comebacks. With Sridevi creating a worthwhile impression last week, Rani Mukerji and Manisha Koirala battle it out this week with Bhoot Returns and Aiyyaa releasing on the same day. Preity Zinta is all set to mark her return with Ishkq in Paris. National award winning Marathi director Sachin Khudalkar spins a tale around a wacked-out (wakda) family in his first attempt at Hindi cinema and he does it with a clash of Marathi

Aai ga ! This Aiyyaa is like a prolonged Axe Effect ad! Homely filmi Maharastrian girl, living in a decrepit house right next to a garbage dump in Pune with loud parents and a useless brother, seeks alliance from a suitable Maharastrian boy who does not wear full sleeve shirts on a banian for marriage. However, since same eligible Marathi girl is having stronger olfactory senses than a pregnant woman, she falls in love with the smell of a thoroughly unsuitable

Aiyyaa is a bewilderingly odd film. In 2009, writer-director Sachin Kundalkar made a film called Gandha, which consisted of three short stories. Here he adapts one of these stories about a girl with a heightened sense of smell. Meenakshi, played by Rani Mukerji, is a middle-class Maharashtrian girl who is led by her nose. She falls in love with a brooding, silent Tamilian because his smell intoxicates her.

A Marathi director takes the plunge in mainstream Bollywood cinema and he almost creates a slick flick. Well, almost. And that is the tragedy of AIYYAA, a film which shows a lot of promise in the first 15 minutes and then spirals downwards once Rani Mukherji walks in for an interview, walks up to the fifth floor and runs into Maina, a character that has been unnecessarily introduced which actually knocks off the build-up of the first quarter

Umm... maybe it sounded funnier in his head when he was in his Dream-um. Or on paper-um. But on film-um, Sachin Kundalkar's exhaustingly long Aiyyaa makes you go ‘Aiyyoo,’ Kill Me Now-um. Wake up-um, makers... and smell the oothappam. This is not a plot-um that lends itself to be watched for this long-um. It's as much fun as getting rid of the chewing-gum that's caught to the bottom of your shoe. Yes, so unless you think that adding

She walks into a job interview in yellow salwar suit, tells the interviewer she loves yellow flowers, yellow saris and yellow sweets, and then declares her favourite colour is red. Rani Mukerji's latest avatar, Marathi mulgi Meenakshi Deshpande, is a little crazy and wholly clueless. That's what the scene is telling you. Less than quarter of the runtime into Aiyyaa's unbearably stretched-out two and half hours, you realise the film itself is very much like Meenakshi

Aiyyaa is an ambitious film. Director Sachin Kundalkar self-consciously attempts a sensual magic realism, a half-dream, half-reality world with a film-crazed heroine at its centre. When we first see Rani Mukherjee’s Meenaxi, she is wearing a white and blue dress of a certain vintage and large sunglasses with white frames, and dancing to a Vividh Bharti prastuti which is somehow not just one song but a medley of 80s greatest hits. Tejaab! Mera Balma!

The opening scenes of 'Aiyyaa' borrow heavily from Sridevi, Madhuri Dixit and Juhi Chawla’s blockbuster hits from the 90s and leave you a little mystified about the heroine's ambitions. However, your curiosity remains unrewarded and by the time the end credits roll, we were left more than a little dissatisfied. Rani Mukerji brings talent to the table in 'Aiyyaa', but her performance isn't enough to carry this one through

Director Sachin Kundalkar’s “Aiyyaa” is based on one of three stories in his earlier Marathi film called “Gandha”. The story, about a girl who falls in love with a man because of the way he smells, is 30 minutes long, simply and honestly told. There are are no frills, no side characters and certainly no sign of any of the absurdity that Kundalkar brings to “Aiyyaa”. It is very difficult to slot Aiyyaa into a genre. There are strains of comedy, drama, romance and the absurd

Review: Once upon a time, three masterminds namely, Rani Mukerji, Anurag Kashyap and Sachin Kundalkar, got together to work on a film that highlights......

As the film nears its climax, Rani Mukerji’s character’s father cries out, “Yeh sab kya ho raha hai (What is going on?)”. He is not the only one baffled by Sachin Kundalkar’s Bollywood debut film. Meenakshi Deshpande (Rani Mukerji) is a spirited middle-class Maharashtrian girl who impersonates Sridevi, Madhuri and Juhi Chawla in her dreams to escape her humdrum existence. In real life, she lives in a decrepit house with a family that makes

More than anything else, 'Aiyyaa' is a film that could have been a truly subversive, exhilarating ride with a sexually aware, sensually charged woman at its centre. A woman who is willing to follow her nose, and her heart, to where it takes her : in this instance, past an overflowing ‘kachre ka dabba’ to a sweet-smelling hottie. But Sachin Kundalkar’s whose Marathi ‘Gandha’ did this infinitely better, doesn’t manage the reprise, and what we get is

A short Marathi film called Gandh has been turned into 138 mins of unwatchable Hindi cinema. Blame it on Vidya Balan for making raunchy south Indian dancing the flavour of the season with an out-of-shape heroine making it even more distasteful. A Labrador sniffs out what it desires and goes after it. Substitute a middle class woman in the marriage market for the Lab and you get the dirty picture as Meenaxi (Rani Mukherjee) literally puts

More than anything else, 'Aiyyaa' is a film that could have been a truly subversive, exhilarating ride with a sexually aware, sensually charged woman at its centre. A woman who is willing to follow her nose, and her heart, to where it takes her : in this instance, past an overflowing ‘kachre ka dabba’ to a sweet-smelling hottie. But Sachin Kundalkar’s whose Marathi ‘Gandha’ did this infinitely better, doesn’t manage the reprise, and what we get is

Yeh sab kya ho raha hai (what on earth is going on here)?,' wonders Rani Mukerji's character Meenaxi Deshpande in Aiyyaa as the film nears its climax. How on earth could she read my mind? I wonder aloud. But then this question begins troubling you no sooner than the first 30 minutes of the film has jarred your senses. That is the emotion you come out with as credits roll at the end of the film. Widely talked about as Rani Mukerji's comeback film

The female lead of the film has a strange smell fetish. She is turned on by the musk of a man. And that is an attribute enough to qualify him as her dream man!!! Unfortunately the film largely (rather only) banks on this female fixation, which isn't an attribute enough to qualify for a feature length film. Alas you smell the rat quite early! Meenakshi (Rani Mukherji) is an average (and animated) Marathi mulgi from Pune and her middleclass family is in search

Yaaargh. Eyes hidden behind goggles, she makes the brain boggle. Hey lady, take it easy. Phooey, why the tsunami of take-offs on the widely adored songs-’n’-dances of Madhuri, Sridevi and Juhi? No dhak dhak here, only yuck yuck. Truly, director Sachin Kundlakar’s Aiyyaa lapses into a puerile parody of vintage Bolly-hits. The digs — or tributes? — on the Yash Raj brand of chiffon boogies, a magnum spoof of Padmalaya studio’s matka natyams

Yaaargh. Eyes hidden behind goggles, she makes the brain boggle. Hey lady, take it easy. Phooey, why the tsunami of take-offs on the widely-adored songs-‘n’-dances of Madhuri, Sridevi and Juhi? No dhak dhak here, only yuck yuck. Truly, director Sachin Kundlakar’s Aiyyaa lapses into a puerile parody of vintage Bolly-hits. The digs –or tributes? – on the Yash Raj brand of chiffon boogies, a magnum spoof of Padmalaya studio’s matka natyams

After watching 'Aiyyaa', one actually feels bad for Rani Mukerji who is definitely made for better films. In fact even from promotion perspective she went all out for the film. However the makers are just not justified in roping in a talent like her and expect that it would be good enough for a film to succeed. There is some bit of content that one expects and ironically, 'Aiyyaa' neither gets into a commercial zone not explores an arty setting to the fullest

The movie is a (nonsensical) ‘fairy tale ‘of a middle-class Maharashtrian girl called Meenakshi (Rani Mukerji) who yearned to be an actress but eventually settled down with a job in an art college.Meenakshi is melodramatic and a dreamer who escapes into her fantasy land anytime and anywhere. While Meenakshi is a dreamer, the girl’s family is no less and somewhat remind you of characters of ‘The Addams Family’.In straight words, ‘Aiyya’ is not a script badly handled rather it is a script wrongly written. We can only hope that Sachin Kundalkar doesn’t repeat his mistake and make his audience go ‘Aiyyaa’ in pain again.