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Cast: Nana Patekar, Dimple Kapadia, Rehan Khan, Sunil Shetty, Vidya Malvade and Anjana Sukhani
Director: Kabir Sadanand
Tum Milo Toh Sahi is about love and longing in Mumbai.
Three couples from different generations struggle with the unrelenting demands of career, money, ambition, stress. A sprawling café called Lucky plays a central role in their romance and heart-ache. The idea isn’t half bad but the execution is so amateurish that you barely care whether Lucky Café and its various lovers sink or swim.
Writer-director Kabir Sadanand sets up one couple from each demographic. So the fifty-plus Subramanium and Dilshad, played by Nana Patekar and Dimple Kapadia, are singletons who gradually develop a warm friendship.
Anita and Amit, played by Vidya Malvade and Suneil Shetty, are a married couple struggling with a newly bought four-bedroom flat, his long-work hours, their neglected son and EMIS.
And Bikramjeet and Shalini, played by Rehan Khan and Anjana Sukhani, are trendy college types whose basic function seems to be singing forgettable songs and spouting supposedly youthful lingo such as ‘Whatever’ and ‘Drama queen.’
Not surprisingly, Kabir does best with eldest couple. Subramanium, permanently disgruntled and mourning his dead mother, is the most detailed character of the lot and Nana finds the comedy in his sourness.
Dilshad veers into caricature – I’m sure Parsi women don’t end every other sentence with "Dikra" – but Dimple plays her with affection and energy and at least has some fun doing it.
I wish Tum Milo Toh Sahi had been their story only because the other couples are as bland as wallpaper. Anita looks pinched and does pottery. Amit looks pinched and does his best to please his over-bearing boss who keeps saying “You’re my man.”
Did I mention that the plot hinges around Amit’s employer, a multi-national company called Bluebell, buying Lucky Café so they can replace "brun maska" and "cutting chai" with overpriced cappuccinos.
So we also get some lectures on the importance of preserving our heritage and not blindly aping the West. And the final icing on the cake is the deafening back-ground score. Each time, the greedy multi-national executives are on screen, the soundtrack goes: bluebell, bluebell.
I think the attempt here was a bitter-sweet love letter to Mumbai and its people but the film is fatally undone by the clumsy writing.
The screenplay is static and the dialogue, superbly low IQ. At one point, a party-hardy friend in a bar is encouraging the sozzled Amit to have some fun. He motions at a sexy woman and says: "Saanp pitari mein band hai ki King Cobra mein abhi bhi jaan hai".
Few films can survive lines like these.
(Social / Drama)