Ishqiya - Vidya Balan's blouse et al

Finally bunked the office early at 7:30PM to come for Ishqiya, to devour Naseeruddin Shah with an open mouth, to laugh with 'Circuit'... sorry Arshad Warsi and to just understand why is this movie seemed different.

Surely it was different. The storyline was kick-ass. More specifically the set in which the movie is shot is very realistic. The house of the widow, furniture, the village, the cars and everything that was selected to be part of set design is simply superb. Production design credits go to Nitin Chandrakant Desai. I wonder how much research must have gone into it. And it was surely entertaining. Recommended for sure.

Naseeruddin Shah is simply great and funny. Story (Vishal Bhardwaj, Sabrina Dhawan and Abhishek Chaubey) is intelligent. Cinematography (Mohana Krishna) is beautiful with some awesome editing. The dialogues are written well & quite funny. The characters are well sketched.. ya the movie has many good points.

But I expect a lot from a movie.

The dialogue delivery was not consistent in the native dialect, pronunciation and way of speaking. Only Naseeruddin Shah could carry it through the movie. Our Vidyadhar Verma - the Sena leader and village leader was ironically the worst. It seemed he is from the Tollywood taking Hindi lessons to enter Bollywood.

The screenplay had some flaws. People peeping through windows with half their heads visible from inside, and the guys romping inside the room don't get to know the intrusion, was a bit too much to digest. I can expect that from a comedy but not from Ishqiya. The police people disappearing suddenly in the last scene was also very glaring.

Vidya Balan was a cute disappointment. She is beautiful, feminine and all but her acting is a fight. She sings a slow number with her Veena. If I had my way, I would have made her dance in that scene. Then it would not have been so clear that she is actually not singing. That she is only lip-syncing. She gave it away big time on that scene. I could only think that Nandita Das would have been a great choice. In fact, that actress from Haazaron Khuwaishein Aisi - Chitrangada Singh comes to my mind too, and would have done a better job, to my opinion.

One point ironically stuck me was Vidya Balan's blouses. In an effort to get into the seductive zone, they have become very city-ish. The cut & the stitching of the blouses were very un-villagelike.

I wonder why that stuck to me as the sore point !! Go and watch.