A fluffy take on the seemingly subtle but very visible urban-urban and urban-tier2 divide in our society has its moments of glory, reflection and provocation, but fizzles out like a fire cracker in the rain (or whatever is the more appropriate analogy). ‘Aisha’ disappoints and ends up being a pointless journey through shopping malls, weekend excursions, ugly duckling to swan revisits and a female protagonist who is obsessed with playing cupid.
The story revolves around Aisha, a rich man’s daughter who spends most of her time buying new clothes for herself, setting people up or transforming ‘behnjees’ (they used the word; I didn’t) to chic urbanites. In the process, she fails to understand that people can take their own decisions and dress the way they want to and speak the way they want to and fall in love with the people they want to. Her bubbly existence is often blown by her childhood friend Arjun who sees her as a child who never grew up. Her group of friends is strangely linked as the guy who was interested in her, ends up getting interested in her best girlfriend and a rustic friend whom she tries to set up with the guy ends up liking Arjun but goes in for another rustic friend. We’ll something like that. How she handles this whole merry go round and whether she finally wakes up to the real world is what the film tries to explore.
The story in parts held a lot of promise. It could have explored the chic versus rustic debate or even the influence that a cupid who also thinks she’s right can have on the life of someone who is naïve enough to trust her and be guided. Instead, ‘Aisha’ meanders through the aforementioned quadrangle or pentagon or the appropriate geometric shape to leave you perplexed at the objective. It is meant to be a coming of age story but doesn’t show the protagonist to be any less immature than what she was at the beginning. The music by Amit Trivedi is peppy with the title song being the best of the lot. I wonder why it was played only once in the beginning. It could have been the protagonist's theme throughout.
In the acting department, the performances of the support cast supersede that of Sonam Kapoor (Aisha) and Abhay Deol (Arjun). Cyrus Sahukar as Randhir, who is interested in Aisha and, Amrita Puri as Shefali, the rustic girl and Ira Dubey as Pinky Bose, Aisha’s best friend all deliver good performances. Sonam Kapoor looks good on screen, is believable when she plays the spoilt brat but does not bring in any nuances in her performance. There are parts when her character can show the dark side, but it doesn’t come through in her performance. Abhay Deol’s fan following is puzzling. I guess people like him because he chooses interesting roles, but he comes across as a stone faced actor with absolutely lifeless eyes and just doesn’t deliver in intense or comic or romantic moments.
Overall, ‘Aisha’ gives you a few laughs, rouses your interest a bit, but leaves you disappointed.
