It’s an excruciating introduction.
Somewhere in the US, when Tejas Patel (Ritwik Bhowmick) meets his prospective in-laws, the obnoxious millionaire couple Pam and Bob Hansraj (Sheebha Chaddha, Rajit Kapur), you wonder why he doesn’t dump them, their grating accents and patronising snobbery into the Atlantic. Instead, he meekly submits to Bob’s lie detector test and invites them to “maro Gujarat” to meet his family. Bob is pronounced as “Baab” by the way, American you know.
At the other end, somewhere in Gujarat, is his mother, the perfect Pallavi ben (Madhuri Dixit) wishing him go-d-speed. Grrr, what’s with director Anand Tiwari and annoying accents?
The perfect Patel wife makes rotlis, paints the walls, dances energetically to ‘Rangeela maro naach’, and is the soul of the housing society. They even vote her husband as President only because she’s so popular.
Between Tiwari and writer Sumit Batheja, comedy is about Tejas’ dad Manohar Patel (Gajraj Rao) grappling with the word “commemorate” and bumbling around the word “virgin”. When the Hansrajs arrive with accents and superciliousness as luggage, there’s an entire sequence on Manohar extolling his “clean virgin family”. With a freeze shot of the family.
When it’s not his English, Tiwari drums up “comedy” with Manohar’s genitals, no less. Enlarged with an aphrodisiac. What a climax.
Tejas has a sister too, activist Tara (Shrishti Shrivastava) who holds a pride flag, fights for gay rights and has a long-distance marriage for no valid reason except to have her plonked in the house to stir the p(l)ot.
For an activist, Tara’s pretty okay watching her mother run and fetch and even bring water to her room.
Just when you think it’s all about Tejas, girlfriend Esha Hansraj (Barkha Singh), his parents and hers, the perfect steps out as imperfect.
A blast from Pallavi’s past which is childishly disclosed to the world upturns it all.
The Hansrajs stomp off in a huff.
But nothing adds up.
In such a scenario, why would the Patels go to a party for the Hansrajs?
Why would the Patels and the Hansrajs go off on a day-long picnic or shopping spree together?
Why on earth would Americans “back home” react to Pallavi’s past like the local housing society in Gujarat does?
Why would an educated boy like Tejas take his mom to an exorcist to “cure her”?
Simone Singh (as Kanchan, Pallavi’s childhood friend) and her feminist spiel in a women-only cable car ride also doesn’t ring true as it comes out of the blue and seems to have been stuck into the screenplay with hastily found glue.
Even ‘Rangeela maro naach’ sounds like an imitation of ‘Doli taro dhol baaje’.
Trying to be funny (and failing), trying to be contemporary (and failing), and trying to be a social messenger (and failing), would be the perfect sum up. it weren’t for the watchable Madhuri Dixit and Simone Singh who’s like a welcome ball of energy, I’d say, this one ain’t rangeela at all. Right, “Baab”?
Watch Maja Ma Trailer:
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