Thaindian News

Aisha: A competent effort

Rating: 2.5 out of 5*

Starring: Sonam Kapoor, Abhay Deol, Amrita Puri, Lisa Haydon, Ira Dubey, Cyrus Sahukar and Arunoday Singh

Director: Rajshree Ojha

August 6, 2010 (Sampurn Wire): Aisha is based on Jane Austin’s popular novel Emma. Western filmmakers have attempted the big screen versions of Emma before and Rajshree Ojha has come up with a competent if not a fabulous Indianised version of the same with Aisha.

The film narrates the tale of Aisha (Sonam Kapoor) who believes in match-making as a hobby and follows it passionately. When she is done with match making of her aunt, Aisha takes a new entrant to her world as her next project. The girl is Shefali (Amrita Puri) and is from a smaller town and just reached Delhi to find herself a suitor. Aisha goes about changing the small town girl into someone more like her and then tries setting her up with a childhood friend Randhir (Cyrus Sahukar). Randhir loves Aisha and not Shefali and when Aisha gets to know this, blanks him out of her life. Aisha’s best friend Pinky Bose (Ira Dubey) finds a mate in Randhir and walks out on Aisha. In the meantime Aisha moves on to set Shefali up with another guy. All this while her childhood friend Arjun (Abhay Deol) tries to tell her that she is just making things worse for Shefali. By the time Aisha realizes things, it is quite late.

The problem with Aisha is that it is supposed to be a romantic comedy but it does not draw any emotions from the audience. The story stays superficial and there are no scenes – even the climax scene when Aisha knows she is in love – that are interesting enough. Also the scenes which act as a catalyst to the change in Aisha’s outlook are completely mistimed and not built well. Clearly the issue is with the screenplay. The dialogues are good though.

Technically the film is shot well and makes Delhi looks good. The costumes are a high point of the film and it will manage to set quite a few fashion trends. The music is good too.

On a scale of performances Sonam scores decent. Abhay Deol does his job well, though we wish we could have seen more of him. Ira Dubey, Arunoday Singh and Lisa Haydon are efficient. The real scene stealer though is Amrita Puri. She will bring a smile on your faces every time she comes on screen.

However despite numerous pluses, the minuses bough Aisha down in regular intervals and the two hour running time also appears tedious! So take your call, if you want to watch a light breezy entertainer that doesn’t really appeal to your heart but is beautiful to watch, go for Aisha.

–Sampurn Wire