Hope and a Little Sugar Hindi Movie
Tanuja Chandra, probably the most prolific female director in Bollywood today, is a name that arouses reluctant admiration. Never a successful filmmaker (in the common, Box office driven sense of the word) she is known more for her sheer tenacity and constant attempts to make (mostly 'woman-oriented') films that are described with that simple adjective called 'different', than for genuine excellence in the craft of filmmaking.
'Hope and A Little Sugar' is in fact, and sadly so, the latest in Ms. Chandra's string of eminently forgettable films, after the disastrous 2006 release 'Zindaggi Rocks'. Its good intentions hardly can mask the fact that 'Hope and A Little Sugar' is a half-baked excuse of a film, surprisingly rushed through, amateurish (especially for a director who is 9 films old) and lacking any emotional depth.
Essentially a cross-religious romance, set against a backdrop of cultural prejudice driven by an environment of hostility post 9/11, the film follows Ali Siddiqui (newcomer Amit Syal), an aspiring photographer who falls in love with the much-married Saloni (Mahima Choudhary). Ali develops a close bond with her family, consisting of her husband Harry (Vikram Chatwal) and parents-n-law (played by Anupam Kher and Suhasini Mulay), when on 9/11, Vikram dies, leaving the family shattered. While Saloni begins to reciprocate Ali's love, her father-in-law, Colonel Oberoi can't quite come to terms with his son's death and develops feelings of hate and bitterness, especially towards Ali.
Despite being a film with a reasonably topical and sensitive (even if done-to-death) subject, Hope & A Little Sugar is as under-whelming and unaffecting as film experiences get. Abounding with clichés, right from the background score to the ill-etched characterizations, the film is almost sometimes shockingly shallow, especially in the way it deals with Harry's death. Saloni actually recovers from her husband's demise no less quickly than she would, from say- a minor cut.
Potentially powerful moments of conflict are reduced to sheer nothingness or farce under Chandra's simplistic direction, bereft of any undertones or layers. The acting isn't great either- Syal is earnest, but hardly impressive, Mahima Choudhary is dreadfully vapid, failing to invest any feeling into her already lifeless role, while Anupam Kher is expectedly the only one who registers some, even if little impact, as his performance ranges from heartfelt to over-the-top hammy.
So much for the dainty-sounding title- 'Hope and A Little Sugar' is well, quite a hopeless film. Barely does one recover from one film, another worse film lines up at the BO, leaving us critics struggling to find anything likeable about it. Thus, on this dismal note, I sign off again this week- only clutching on to the feeble hope that next week would finally bring some rain at the theatres, parched of good cinema.
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