REVIEW: Meerabai Not Out

Mandira Bedi covered from head to toe doesn't make for an interesting watch

Who wants to watch a Mandira Bedi covered from head to toe? Not many! That too in her first full fledged role in a mainstream Hindi film after her super successful XXXtra Innings avatar. And the movie is also about cricket.

Who wants to watch Eijaz Khan – he dances well and hits the gym with a vengeance (it seems) on the big screen opposite her? Maybe a few who loved the actor on television.

And who wants to watch Kumble hiccupping? Hmmmm lets see…

The drool factor in this PNC film which probably should have released long back is decidedly not much to talk about. So the only saving grace in this film has to be the storyline, except for the fact that, it isn't.

Director Chandrakant Kulkarni has tried so hard to make this film look realistic that it has ended up looking nothing like a movie. Let me explain – the characters Meera Achrekar (Mandira Bedi), her brother Manoj (Mahesh Manjrekar) and her entire family look like your next-door neighbours. And the movie is about their everyday life. And by that I mean the mundane everyday life without any twist or turn that a tale demands. Brilliant concept! But so not a movie! (Could have been a documentary, maybe?)

Movies on normal everyday, next door neighbour like characters have really done well in the recent past (eg Dasvidaniya) but there has always been a touching tale or something different that makes the movie exciting. Meerabai Not Out somehow fails to achieve that. Though the main protagonist played by Mandira Bedi is definitely an unconventional; character, the story fails to explore that 'differentness' in her too well.

Our heroine Meera can't think beyond cricket and one cricketer in particular – Anil Kumble. A math teacher in a Hindi medium school somewhere in Dadar (Mumbai), Meera comes across as just another cricket crazy person in a country where people build temples and hold pujas and yagnas for cricketers and cricket matches. The only anomaly could be her being a female.

Just how crazy is crazy… or just how mad is this Meera Achrekar about cricket we never get a feel of. She holds protest marches and fights with people trying to black match tickets outside a stadium and though both instances look crazy they don't feel the same. As a viewer, we still feel that Meera is just another girl who's a little in love with Anil Kumble…like Meera Vasudevan in Rules Pyaar Ke Superhit Formula.

Moving on, our heroine also has a team named Meera XI in her society. So they play cricket and watch cricket matches together and cheer Kumble on until a very real problem of finding Meera a life partner sets in.

And thus the quest begins. The brother visits matrimonial institutions, the mother matches horoscopes and Meera tries to evade both. But one fine day, our lady bumps into our hero, who's also a doctor and love blossoms. And it just happens before you even get a feel of Meera being in love. Like one fine day over coffee Meera and Arjun (Eijaz Khan) just decide they're in love and should get married. And maybe it does happen that way in 'real' life. But then one feels 'in love'. And in a movie, we expect to 'feel' the lovers being in love.

And then the story of Meera's marriage unfolds which we think is the main plot of the film.

The film probably believes in being realistic with 'real' characters and all. And 'Piece of life' is definitely a good concept in cinema but we believe that the life one takes the piece out from should have at least one interesting aspect. Meera's doesn't.

Well, that is not entirely true. There is a very big twist in the film which I wouldn't want to give out since it's the only twist in the film. But what's sad is the way even that situation was dealt in the film. This very real problem in Meera's life was not etched out well enough. It almost looked hurried as if the director was running out of time and did not have enough money left.

In fact the director should have done justice to this sequence by editing some of the unnecessary silly excuses for 'comic relief'. I mean will you really consider the PT teacher falling for Meera and visiting the marriage counselor or Meera Achrekar being told that she looks like Mandira Bedi (why wouldn't anybody look like herself?) as comic?

As for the songs, let me tell you what we discovered, Mandira Bedi can't dance. She can't even sway. All good hips for nothing, sigh! Anyway, the choreographer was smart enough to have her do nothing but look pretty. The hero however compensated for Mandira's non existent dancing skills.

Anil Kumble can't even hiccup convincingly

The one factor which could have pulled the audience, Anil Kumble did not do much either. He only hiccupped his way through the film. Whenever Meera dreamt of Kumble, the cricketer would start hiccupping. And that too he does rather unconvincingly.

As for the other actors, Mahesh Manjrekar was very good as the elder brother who left his dream of becoming a cricketer to manage his family and get a job. We could feel his frustration when somebody talks about cricket. He is irritable, short tempered, really worked up and looks every bit a common man trying to manage a family of five with an unmarried sister. This man should surely take up acting more seriously.

Moving on to Eijaz Khan. The Ekta Kapoor soap sensation has done full justice to his character in his big Bollywood debut. He has danced well, he's looked good and what's more he has put in a lot of effort to make his character stand out even when it was not too well defined. On a scale of one to five, we'd definitely give him a three!

Anupam Kher as Arjun's father was his usual 'comic' self. As a father obsessed about his son's marriage, he reminded us of himself in DDLJ. He was probably the only character who did not look too much of a next door neighbour in the film with his funny antics.

Coming to Mandira Bedi, she reminded us again of the Shanti we so loved ages ago. Despite being declared the glam queen of cricket, Mandira plays her normal, girl next door role with élan. And for some time you may forget that she could even look hot. Her character is convincing but what fails her are the circumstances and maybe the director who has failed to etch out the situations too well.

The 'film' actually could have passed for a good one hour telefilm like a Star Bestseller or something. The actors were good. The story could have been told better within an hour. And with no glam quotient the film anyway looked more like television material than anything else. Actually Ekta Kapoor soaps do have more glam quotient than this one.

VERDICT: Should you go for this film which is really not about cricket or Kumble or Mandira Bedi? Only if you want to see Eijaz Khan dancing topless!

Rating: 2/5