Keerthy Suresh is the only actress whose films are releasing on multiple OTT platforms even during Covid and recently we saw her film, Penguin release exclusively on OTT. Now, her another film Miss India released on Netflix. Jagapathi Babu, Naresh, Rajendra Prasad kind of stalwarts are in the film too. Let’s discuss this “Chai-wali” film in detail, made by a debutant.
Story: Samyuktha (Keerthy Suresh) dreams about making it huge as an entrepreneur but her family discourages her. Her mother (Nadhiya) asks Samyuktha to concentrate on “settling down” in life like all other girls rather than chasing such dreams. But Samyuktha dreams about opening a huge enterprise. She decides on Chai business as her path to huge success. But the owner of a big coffee shop (Jagapathi Babu) challenges her. How will this Coffee vs Chai battle end up? Watch the movie to know the answers.
Performances: Keerthy Suresh lost her charm along with her weight. In this movie, her new look seems to have worked against her. While as an actor she is very good and fits the bill, her commanding screen presence that made Mahanati such a hit, is not the case in this film.
Jagapathi Babu is getting boring in these rich businessman roles and he deserves much better characters as an actor. Rajendra Prasad, Nadhiya, Naresh tried their best to give their best to the scenes that don’t rise up from being amateur.
Technicalities: SS Thaman as the music composer tries to fill all the gaps with his loud music. He tried to add some kind of essence to the scenes that suffered with bad writing with some pulsating BGM. But the scenes are so bad that he couldn’t save them at all.
Dani Sanchez-Lopez and Sujith Vaassudev’s visuals add nothing to the film. Film looks costly and huge but again the writing lacks any clue on how to really use all these assets.
Tammiraju tried his best to give the movie some pep but as an editor he is restricted by the script and here we can see that he couldn’t really come out of those restrictions and develop a good film.
Narendra Nath’s writing is too basic and we can guess each scene minutes before they open on screen and that really hurts the film. The Coffee vs Chai concept needed some more play and this movie doesn’t have that.
Analysis: Starting a big franchise based on food related business is not easy and that should have been well researched before an entire movie is made. If you sit through the entire film, you feel like the song sequence from the Kal Ho Naa Ho film written by Karan Johar 18 years ago about an Indian food shop becoming victorious in the USA has been taken as an inspiration. It feels like an age has passed by after we realise that there is still one more hour to sit through. Second half loses complete focus by the end of the movie and the last scene is just a measure of the complete lack of knowledge about the subject.
Makers have taken a lot of time to say that food business is the best way going forward for the protagonist but that spoils the rest of the drama as well. By the time we get some kind of good scenes to watch the film, the entire film feels like a waste of time. Film suffers with lack of focus and good writing. Movie could have easily used some focused writing and new approach. Even as only OTT film, this one doesn’t work at all.
Bottom Line: One Monologue dragged into a whole film!
Rating: 2.5/5
