Mirch

Regarding the novelty of the concept, the film deserves an applaud as the film isn't a typical 3 hr movie with songs, villains, or any climax. The film involves the story of a struggling film writer who narrates 4 short stories to a producer. All the stories, based on different time periods are based on the sexual frustration of women which appears pretty hilarious on the screen. However, the viewers must be alerted for the content which might be offensive. Overall, with few reservations, the film makes a pretty good entertainment; but few viewers might not just stomach the content for which the film might have went pretty unnoticed.

Rating: 2 stars out of 4

The concept of this movie is novel for bollywood. But filmmaking lets it down. The two center characters of this movie are screenplay writer cum director and editor. Probably this is one of the reason that original filmmaker falls in love with the film and looses the objectivity. There are many unnecessary scenes and buildups. If you just watch the end of each four stories, it is as good as you have watched full movie. All four stories are such that showing a long buildup is not necessary. If you just watch the end, you automatically understand the background, and there is no need of the buildup. This movie can be very easily edited into a short movie that would be much better to watch than this longer version.

While the concept may not be entirely novel and writer/director Vinay Shukla seems to have sincere intentions, 'Mirch' suffers from poor writing. There are four stories withing a story (thus in total five). While I liked that the women were portrayed as strong and dominant, the men are almost portrayed as dumb caricatures.

The first story that revolves around a struggling screenwriter and his girlfriend who try to convince a producer to make a movie from his script. While this story is halfbaked, the characters are very poorly developed. Moreover, the Tisca Chopra track in the end is completely pointless and looks forced. The following two stories are more like folktales. While the second segment is well executed, the songs were a bit excessive. The love scenes in the third segment look staged and lacked sensuality but the art direction is wonderful. The fourth segment is pretty much the typical bored metropolitan housewife having an affair with an artist story and it is unnecessarily stretched. Similarly, the last one is needlessly extended and ruined by Boman Irani's irritating performance.

Arunodhay Singh is very good in the second and third segment and he hams it up in the first and fourth segment. Konkona Sen Sharma and Raima Sen are first rate. While Konkona performs naturally, Raima shows tremendous growth as an actress. Ila Arun is equally fun to watch. Shahana Goswami too does a terrific job even though her character wasn't properly fleshed out. Rajpal Yadav does a decent job and Shreyas Talpade goes over the top.

While I liked that 'Mirch' tries to tell the story of smart and dominant women who definitely know how to manipulate their men, it's mostly been let down by poor writing, editing and average execution. Which is a pity because it had a lot of potential.

Vinay Shukla has done an excellent task of weaving separate stories together on a common theme of suspicion and lust. Although the theme of all the stories portrayed in the film are innate human desires, the portrayal is subtle and never relapses into anything similar to the traditional ribaldry that marks mainstream Bollywood films (aka dances with towel between legs or songs with incantations of 'jawani'). The cast is powerful, and lives up to its promise, although the second half of the movie loses its Woody-Allenesque feel and becomes much too dark, and even predictable. Overall, a good watch, and one of the few recent movies that tickle the humor, as well as get the audience thinking about the frailty of human relationships.

This is one of the finest piece of art, Bollywood had ever produced. I am not going to give my point of view on story line, but I can tell you its got wonderful Screenplay, Cinematography, Art Direction. Music is also good. Please don't go by its Box-office collection data, People are not so matured yet to risk going cinema without any superstar's involvement. In fact I regard it as the best movie of the year 2010. Sadly, It wasn't given any notice at all, Even though its cast wasn't at all strange

If your taste is offbeat and you like dramatic story line, than its a GO for you!

Vikas Lohia