There was a time when we cinema enthusiasts couldn’t wait to get into movie theatres. Now, with a film like Nayyi Navelli, it’s the opposite: I couldn’t wait to flee from the movie theatre.
The film is so awful it could well rank among the ten worst movies of all times. But then there are so many recent contenders for the botch honours.
This one ranks as a grand slam among cinematic stinks. It reeks of instant salvation for its producer Aanand Rai who in the past produced some reasonably meritorious cinema. With his recent productions falling by the wayside we can’t really blame Rai for jumping on the supernatural-mythological bandgwagon.
After all, if Ekta Kapoor can get away with it, why not Aanand Rai?
It’s not so much the idea of a sensible filmmaker doing an Ekta Kapoor that is as scary as a progressive actor like Yami (Haq) Gautam agreeing to play a dayan/chudail/pisahcheeni, no matter witch way we look at it, Yami is an embarrassment as a new bahu in a family of weirdos who turns out to be their saviour in a fight to finish with a demon designed to give AI a bad name.
Everything about this twisted concoction smells suspicious. Why is Yami Gautam playing an avatar of Anita Guha? Why did Aanand Rai agree to produce a film so deviant in its intentions, it feels like a scam? And while making a film that relies almost entirely on special effects, why did the makers not spend more time and money on getting the graphics right?
The Rakshasa who fights with the Dayan (who is actually a closeted goddess) sports plastic Dracula teeth which threaten to come loose anytime. It was actually a race, a teeth yatra, to the finish between the demon’s dentures and me, as I grated my teeth so hard I feared they would come apart.
Indeed, this creepy kitsch is an endurance test for any viewer who has any respected for his common sense. The screechy comedy reaches a crescendo with a character called Bantu (Anurag Thakur) who speaks with a lisp and speaks so hard fast and frequently he reminds us of that guy in the lift whom we must endure as there is nowhere to go.
The rest of the cast compromises time-tested actors like Mita Vashisht, Sunita Rajwar, and Suneel Sinha in terrible wigs mouthing dialogues which no selfrespecting actors would mouth unless their family was held hostage.
The focus is on Yami as the witch-turned-deity. She flies through the air with her toes fashionably pointed to the ground, dances with the devil and dines with the ghouls, all the time trying to look as pretty as a freshly plucked daisy in a film that jumps from cheap comedy to deplorable morbidity without even asking itself, why?
