Review: 3 STOREYS

Jaani Pehchani Kahaaniyaan Hain...

2 stars

Mini Review:

3 Storeys are three stories about people who live in a Mumbai

Chawl (old fashioned project housing). It’s almost refreshing

and yet not really. Someone from the ensemble cast overdoes

it. It’s almost good, and then it isn’t because you’ve read the

story somewhere. It’s an idea that’s not new and yet, a decent

effort. Would have been smarter move to put it straight to

Netflix or Amazon.

Main Review:

The female narrator says that she finds stories in the eyes of the

people who live around her and proceeds to tell three of them.

The characters all live in a chawl in Bombay. The first story

revolves around a Flory Mendonca and her blind love for her

son Anton. Had the story been set on the ground floor, the end

would have been more powerful and believable. But the story

is just made ridiculous because Renuka Shahane, who is fine

actor, overacts. Her ‘Catholic Aunty’ trope stops working when

she keeps saying ‘Jesus’ all the time, her walk is obviously

‘acting’, and her cheeks stuffed with cotton look obviously

fake, as does her ghastly wig. To top it, her co-star is Pulkit

Samrat who just cannot stop channeling his inner Salman

Khan, which is ridiculous.

The second story is a desperate adaptation of An Affair To

Remember (1957, starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr) played

out by Sharman Joshi who plays Shanker Verma and Masumeh

Makhija (she is surprisingly very very good) who plays Varsha

Joshi. Since the story is set in Bombay, the two lovers decide to

meet after a year after lad has made something of himself.
Their paths intersect years later... This story is painful to watch
because a song is added, Varsha It’s all very trite.

The third story is that of young love which the mother of the girl

and the father of the boy vehemently oppose, making you wonder

why they get so violent even though the very stereotypical ‘mini

India’ that the chawl is, accepts the young love. It’s all very
excruciating, but the worst part is to watch chawl members
behave like the nosy neighbors they must be, because, Ghetto.

The star of the show is Richa Chadha, who plays the story-teller.

The end is practically brilliant. It suddenly turns the painfully

predictable stories worth the two coffees you drank to stay awake

during the film. It is an experiment, which would work better

when watched on Netflix in the relative comfort of one’s bed,

where snoring would not be considered bad manners...

(edited on saturday march 10, deleted story details)
(this review appears on nowrunning dot com)