Luck By Chance

It is very difficult to laugh at oneself, be critical of ones own fraternity and look at your own life objectively....yet this is what this movie tries to do and wih quite a bit of truthfulness and honesty. It is not about creating spoofs of earlier movies or parodying old songs or critisising famous personality.  What this movie attempts is a realistic look at the Indian film industry, its struggles, pains, manipulation and machinations.  

Its a story of 2 struggling actors - Vikram Jai Singh from Delhi (Farhan Akhtar) and Sona Misra from Kanpur (Konkona Sen Sharma).  Its a story of a star daughter Nikki Walia (Isha Sharvani) whose star mother Neena (Dimple Kapadia) pulls the strings of her life.  Its a story of a bunch of Producers Mr and Mrs Rolly (Rishi Kappor & Juhi Chawla), Mr Chaudhary (Aly Khan) and a flop actor turned director (Sanjay Kapoor).    In between a lot of big stars including Amir Khan, Shahrukh, Rani, Akshaye Khanna, Abhishek Bachchan, Karan Johar, Anurag Kshayap and Hrithik Roshan have been thrown in.  A lot of attention has been kept to small details like a messy open  suitcase lying in the actor's hotel room or a small middle class kitchen of the struggling actress.

The struggler hero Vikram is a smooth talking suave city boy who plays around with different people's emotions to go up the ladder of success.  And there is the naive actress Sona who keeps waiting for others to give her a lead role for 3 years, only to realise that one makes ones own success and failure.  

An acting school teacher explains to his students that to make it big in the Film Industry one has to be at the right place at the right time.  Karan Johar later also reminds the big star Zafar Khan (Hrithik Roshan) that outsiders like SRK and Amitabh became big because bigger stars of their times didnot accept different type of lead roles in Darr, Baazigar and Zanjeer.  

Vikram becomes a star of the film industry and Sona of Television.  Same people who would scoff at a struggler would be quite ready to mingle with you if you have become big.  There is no preaching of morality, right or wrong but just the plain and simple motto that Nothing succeeds like success.  

The best thing about this self-critique is that there has been no attempt to paint anybody fully black or fully white.  There are realistic people - all of them having shades of all human emotions.  At one point the jovial producer (Rishi Kapoor) calls the starlet's mother as a "crocodile in chiffon" to explain her greed which she is now fulfilling through her daughter.  Rishi Kapoor and Juhi are brilliant as the fully loaded Punjabi producer couple who have made big movies and stars and are looked up to by the industry as star makers.  

Shahrukh Khan later delivers a very strong reminder that Its a cocktail - a heady mix of fame, money and power.  But as a star one would do well to not forget those who were your friends when you were a nobody because they are the only ones who will tell you the truth. 

A very good philosophical kind of film from the debut director Zoya Akhtar. The music is good - there is no violence at all and it is quite a clean classy kind of movie.  

I reckon the movie will do good in big metros and cities but might not work as well in small town India.  But it should get a lot of well deserved awards for the director and the lead actors. 

Rating : *****