Been there Seen that : Aisha

The movie is skin deep

The designer clothes, the uber cool locations could not make up for the lack of acting and emotion.

The Story was supposed to be an Indian adaptation of Emma. Well, it looked more like the Indian adaptation of the Alicia Silverstone starrer Clueless. Yes, there's a confused daddy's little girl who traipses around Delhi in her bright yellow Volkswagen Beetle, she tries to be a match maker, and calls everyone 'Bechara'. There is the 'oh so hot' and 'oh so angry' neighbor who tries to be distant to Aisha, but has always always been madly and deeply in love with her. Yawn. It has all the touchings of a Mills and Boons or even a Yash Chopra classic.

The clothes, the bags, the shoes, the labels, the wine, the vodka, the parties were fab, totally loved them, but there remains the almost never answerable question? Who in India dresses like that?? Did the producers think that the India public is mad? A girl who shops for three people in shops like Dior and Luis Vuitton gets a credit card bill of 53 thousand and some odd change? Really? Did Dior open a charity shop in India? Or am I in running for the next President of the United States?

Sonam Kapoor cannot act. Emma Wodehouse was a simple girl, what so we have here? A spoilt, arrogant brat! Ira Dubey for some reason always reminds me of the shrewd film critic she is in "Chicks on Flicks", in the movie she played Pinky, Aisha's best friend. Who names their kid Pinky? Abhay Deol, I did not get what his job was in the big picture? The girl who played Shefali was good. Lisa Haydon as Aarti as the NYC returned yuppie was HOT!!

In the recent years we have seen the westernization of many Indian films, whether it is the clothes or the parties. This movie just showed us how painful the over chickflickization of a hindi movie can be. A few examples
1. 6 mins into the movie, there's an engagement party. Aisha's pregnant sister is shown eating Dahi-Puri from a Martini glass!

2. Sometime later Arjun goes to Aisha's house, and she makes him a peanut butter sandwich, come on..

3. Aisha is always seen cooking things like Baked Fish or making Pot roasts, I am sorry, do we live in the same India?

4. The family eats salad for lunch, that was just the last straw.

There was not a shread of emotion, as Zara put it, not even when Aisha's sister's baby girl is born. The clothes may have been designer at the beginning of the movie, but as the movie progresses, the clothes of the other characters like Pinky and Shefali start to look wannabe. Infact, there's this one outfit of Pinky's the one that she wears when Aisha comes to make up with her, after their little tiff, when they are sitting on the hybrid of the treehouse and sandpit thing, which looks like the ones you get on Janpath. I hope you get what I am getting at. For the slow ones here's a hint- budget, cuts, movie.

Also it was like a lesson on surrogate advertising. L'oreal was everywhere. Aisha only used
l'oreal makeup, lip gloss, nail paint, lip stick. There was scenes where Sonam's make up was a tad too much, like the scene where she first meets Shefali. Her face looks an unnatural white with all the make up. There's another scene, where she's talking to her aunt, sitting in her house, where her add on eye lashes make her look scary! So much for make up.

There is nothing new about the movie, Emma or no Emma. Maybe we have seen too many of these kind of movies. Maybe for a serial chick flick watcher like me, it's cliched. Watch it if you want. Watch it for the clothes, the shoes, the wine and the locations. Watch it for Dior, Luis Vuitton and L'oreal and nothing else.

Out of the three of us who went, two say TRASH IT. And one says CATCH IT!
Talk about giving Ira Dubey a taste of her own medicine. :P