Review: MOH MAYA MONEY

Ho Hum

1.5 stars

Mini Review:

Ranveer Shorey plays Aman, a real estate agent who wants to get rich quick. His wife Divya (Neha Dhupia) is a television producer who disapproves of his schemes. When his one cheat-deal goes wrong, he has to find an even worse idea in order to get money lost. Of course things do not go well. What the audience can see from a mile away, the characters cannot. The film starts out well and quickly degenerates into a poor cousin of Khosla Ka Ghosla or Oye Lucky Lucky Oye.

Main Review:

Remember watching a spate of movies like Oye Lucky Lucky Oye and Khosla Ka Ghosla and smiling at the shenanigans? Well, this film belonged to that time, and alas, it is not only ten years too late but it is so humorless, you just want it to be over soon.

Neha Dhupia manages to put in her heart in her character (Divya). A wife who is a reluctant partner in a dodgy scheme to make money. Her husband Aman is played by the ever unhappy Ranveer Shorey who cribs about being ‘Middle Class’ and hatches a real estate scam.

Of course when he gets caught, he loses his job after his boss literally slaps him. Now you’ve heard people in Delhi are generally physical, and yet it surprises you to see fisticuffs flying when Aman is caught.

Also, we watch Neha scolding people on the phone, but we see no real work. A TV producer who tells a person on the team to ‘edit 23 seconds of a promo’  is basically telling us that the promo must be really long…

And if they’d just added a word ‘Work’ to Visa processes they go through for Hong Kong, then the knowing audience would not cringe. Because Hong Kong offers Indians Visa on arrival.

Why am I looking at such things? Because the humorless movie just gets from ‘it’s-going-to-be-a-disaster’ to ‘why-is-this-disaster-so-slow’. The only shiny beacon is Neha Dhupia whose character grows on you, in spite of the surprise turn towards the end. The story is like so many insurance fraud movies you have seen. You can see where the story is going and wish there was even a teensy-weensy bit of humor in the story. The director makes Ranveer’s character so weak, so miserable, you don’t like him. And once the protagonist becomes dour and unlikeable, the rest of the movie is so easy to dislike. The end is obvious, and you wish it come earlier.       

You do feel for Neha Dhupia and feel terrible when her character gets caught in Ranveer’s web of lies. But empathy for one character does not a movie make, no?

(this review appears on nowrunning dot com)