All Is NOT Well

With the religious satire OMG: Oh My God, director Umesh Shukla earned enough credibility to get funding for a film that he'd have total control over, no questions asked. However, after watching his recent release, the Abhishek Bachchan, Asin, Rishi Kapoor and Supriya Pathak-starrer All Is Well, one can concur it's an opportunity lost.

The film is a gigantic waste of resources, tangible and abstract. It's like watching a pile of cash set on fire and then thrown into the drain at the same time - there's no point even leaping to retain the money, it's simply doomed. What is also annoying about the film is that it treats a serious age-related condition with a comical approach that is far from funny and is rather close to an insult. What explains the kind of ridiculous events the characters in the film put an Alzheimer's patient through?

The film is about a young, ambitious man (Abhishek ) who is thrown out of his family home by his father (Rishi ) who is finicky and annoying, controlling to the point of being Rishi Kapoor in real life. The son goes out to become a successful singer and when he returns home for his share of property, he finds that his aged mother is living in an ashram, suffering from a mental condition while his father is solving crossword puzzles despite being neck-deep in debt.

In the middle of all this, Asin wrestles her way for some inconsequential screen time, throwing in Rhonda Byrne's The Secret as justification for her presence. It is baffling that hers is a real role written by a bunch of real writers. One feels Asin authored it as a precursor to her wedding which was recently used to promote the "family drama."

The actress serves no purpose, is disastrous when she talks and slows the film by nearly two hours - which is its actual running time though it feels that you've been in for 22 years. Sonakshi Sinha erupts on the screen, covers it with intimidating heftiness and soon vanishes after winking wildly on screen. Oddly enough, this is also the time when you see the Alzheimer's patient smiling. This is a movie where *anything* happens.

While All Is Well could've been an interesting story about a son recalibrating a fragile relationship with his father as the family navigates tricky, financial territory, Shukla's screenplay is more interested in creating unfunny, slapstick moments. Who finds people falling off ladders funny anymore? Or bumbling cops chasing evil baddies and moles with fake moustaches? Was this funny ever? The over-exaggerated buffoonery by stock characters gives the film a dated vibe and the dialogue, while sharp at times, is reminiscent of melocomedic nightmares of the 80s and 90s.

Rishi and Supriya, both extremely fine actors, look angry and helpless (respectively) for being stuck in a bad movie. While Rishi still holds up well in the dramatic sequences, Supriya just looks like a sad cow who ventured too far from her cattle. She's given dialogues so bad you feel like filing a pro-euthanasia petition pronto. The film's music works in the sense that it is a welcome respite as none of the characters have to interact with each other.

While Asin's emotive face does what it can, Abhishek is surprisingly in command and handles his character deftly - the only character you see transform. 

However, if you were a fan of OMG, be prepared to be majorly disappointed. A sappy melodrama, which even Indian TV reticently produces these days, has emerged as a full-fledged film to scare the living daylights out of you. Also did I mention that the film ends with a voice over that seems more apt for a Class 2 textbook on the subject: how to respect elders and its unlikely benefits?

Maybe Shukla should have read the book enough number of times to figure out that it doesn't warrant a film.