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Late Anant Balani
Anand Raj Anand, Farhad Wadia
Dev Kohli, Milap Zaveri, Farhad Wadia
Rahul Bose, Perizaad Zorabian, Vijay Raaz, Saurabh Shukla, Asrani, Kaabir
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By Kshama Rao
In Mumbai Matinee, 32-year-old Debashish Chatterjee (Rahul Bose) is desperately trying to lose his virginity and the entire plot (if there is any) is about how he goes about it - of course with the help of an overbearing Parsi landlord, a friend who has a fetish for legs, a fraud baba and an out-of-work Hindi film producer. Late director Anant Balani resorts to some silly bedroom humour and if the chuckles one heard in a suburban theatre are anything to go by, the film seemed to be working for the younger audience.
The film didn't work for us. One, what's the big deal about a 32-year-old man who's still not lost his cherry? Is it a national disaster? Two, it seems a little implausible for someone like Debu who's shown to be an ad guy to have retained his virginity all these years. Though Bose plays the part of Debu perfectly - clumsy, shy, awkward, naive - it's still difficult to believe that he has a problem finding the right solution. He looks too smart for that. Three, while everybody from Vijay Raaz as the baba to Asrani as baba's secretary Pyarelal and Saurabh Shukla as the producer Nitin Kapoor indulge in some funny histrionics, one still doesn't feel tickled - probably the humour is too in-your-face. Four the situations in which, Debu finds himself in range from the corny to the unbelievable (the sequence in which the baba tries to make him do some warm-up exercises for his libido and then promptly superimpose them in Kapoor's C-grade semi-porn film is ridiculous). Last but not the least the character of Sonali Verma (Perizaad Zorabian). A journalist, she first comes to interview Debu who's now become a porn star, she then bails him out, agrees to share her living room with him and finally after some heavy-duty profundity on love shares even her bedroom! What's more, Debu and Sonali have one thing in common - they both are virgins. Great na, for a beginning! So it just required a kiss from Sonali to make Debu jump into the bed with her - just like that.
All said and done, after a point, Mumbai Matinee gets tackier than the colour co-ordinated, card-board sets!
The review is true.. It shows as if virginity is a stigma on your face and everyone knows it.. Kindda absurd in a country like India.. God know what director was thinkin...
- Mahadevi
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