Aiyyaa
Aiyyaa is a 2012 Indian Hindi-language romantic comedy film written and directed by Sachin Kundalkar. The film stars Prithviraj Sukumaran and Rani Mukerji in the lead roles. It was jointly produced by Anurag Kashyap and Viacom 18 Motion Pictures. The film was released on 12 October 2012.
Plot
The story is about a Marathi girl, Meenakshi Deshpande, falling in love with a Tamil artist, Surya Iyer. She is a librarian at a college and has five members in her family : a wheelchair-using grandmother who is blind and has gold teeth; her father, who smokes four cigarettes together; her mother, who is obsessed with Meenakshi's marriage; and her brother Nana, whose only love in life is dogs. To escape the craziness of her family, Meenakshi lives her life in dreams. In her dreams, the only thing she's doing is dancing and enacting her favourite actresses, Madhuri Dixit, Sridevi, and Juhi Chawla. Her colleague Maina, nicknamed "Gaga Bai," is an eccentric woman who dresses up in weird ensembles inspired by pop star Lady Gaga.Meenakshi's family is looking for a suitable groom, but Meenakshi, who does not believe in arranged marriages, is waiting for her prince and wants her dream wedding. That's when Surya enters. Surya is an art student, and the moment Meenakshi looks at him, she falls in love with his tanned skin and a mysterious fragrance emanating from him. By this time her family has found the 'right guy' Madhav for her and is rushing with her wedding.
The rest of the film involves Madhav running after Meenakshi and Meenakshi following Surya. Nana gets engaged to Maina under bizarre circumstances when Meenakshi goes missing on her engagement when she was following Surya and ends up in his incense sticks factory. Meenakshi learns that Surya's fragrance, that she got enthralled by, was because of his involvement in the factory. In the end, Meenakshi succeeds in winning over Surya's heart, and they get engaged in a traditional Maharashtrian ceremony.
Cast
Production
began in August 2011 and filming began by the first week of October 2011. Filming concluded in April 2012.Soundtrack
The soundtrack featured six songs composed by Amit Trivedi with lyrics written by Amitabh Bhattacharya. The soundtrack received positive reviews on its release. Shresht Poddar, of Score Magazine, gave the album 3 out of 5 stars saying, "Melody-wise, the album is just above average. Innovation-wise, it scores full marks from me. Amit Trivedi dares to be experimental when his contemporaries are staying safe by sticking to tried-and-tested methods."Reception
The film was released worldwide on 12 October 2012. Aiyyaa received mixed-to-negative reviews from critics. While Rani's was praised by critics, the plot was criticised. Bravos, a review aggregator website for Indian movies, assigned the film an average score of 38 based on 7. Madhureeta Mukherjee of Times of India gave it 2.5 stars. "Even with such a talented ensemble, this one turns into a cultural showpiece, and gets lost in translation." "Aiyyaa is let down by its weak script," writes Prasanna D Zore of rediff.com.Roshni Devi of Koimoi gave it 3 stars. "Watch Aiyyaa for a quirkily different film with very good performances but be warned that it drags." The social movie rating site MOZVO gave it 2.9 stars. Taran Adarsh of Bollywood Hungama gave it 3 stars. Kanika Sikka of DNA gave it 2.5 stars. "Aiyyaa is an average entertainer".
Kerala Films gave 2 stars and wrote "Aiyya is let down by a confused script." Anupama Chopra of Hindustan Times gave 2 stars and wrote "Whackiness can't carry a film." Reviewers on IMDb gave Aiyya a score of 4.4 out of 10. Shilpa Jamkhandikar of India Masala gave 3 stars, praising the cast and the stories, saying "What it doesn't have is something that binds all of this together. Kundalkar makes a bizarre mash-up of several genres and ends up with a film that doesn't do too much justice to any one of them."
Raghavendra Singh of FilmFare praised the movie and says "It takes courage to present something never-done-before on the larger-than-life canvas of the big screen. And surprisingly debut director Sachin Kundalkar shows this trait with great effect in his film Aiyyaa. Hats off to an established star, Rani Mukerji, for showing such conviction in Kundalkar's experimental vision."
The songs "Aga Bai" and "Dreamum Wakupum" were chartbusters, both getting over 1 million views on YouTube in less than 1 week of being released. Both charted in the top 5 of the India's Airplay Top 100 and have been promoted strongly on TV and radio broadcasts.