'Meenakshi Sundareshwar': Recipe for sleep

Meenakshi Sundareshwar
Hindi (Netflix)
Director: Vivek Soni
Cast: Sanya Malhotra, Abhimanyu Dasani, Shivakumar Subramaniam
Rating: 1.5/5

Any lingering doubts about Bollywood's poor show on streaming sites will vanish if you manage to sit through 'Meenakshi Sundareshwar', which recently dropped on Netflix. Directed by Vivek Soni and produced by Karan Johar, the relationship drama is the blandest Hindi film of the year.

The Hindi film industry is known to ride on the Rajinikanth bandwagon to cover up its lack of content. Rohit Shetty and team pulled off a terrific marketing strategy with Honey Singh's Lungi Dance. The hit song saved the sinking ship that was 'Chennai Express' (2013). A poorly made 'Ra One' (2011) had a Rajinikanth cameo that perhaps was the only interesting aspect of the superhero film.

Such films come with poor research, failing to do justice to the larger-than-life image of the 'Superstar'. They don't succeed on the interesting premise of blending two drastically different cultures.

For instance, it's a mystery why Tamil natives in 'Meenakshi Sundareshwar' speak Hindi, especially when the story is set in Madurai. The one terribly pronounced Tamil word every 20 minutes sounds awful. What's worse is the heroine saying a famous Rajinikanth dialogue which comes across more like a war cry than a punchline.

It's not enough to get the setting of a Tamil Brahmin family right. The basic of filmmaking is to have a solid plot. So silly are the scenes and conflicts of 'Meenakshi Sundareshwar' that it makes you wonder how this project was cleared. When the protagonist Sundareshwar (Abhimanyu Dasani) talks to the heroine Meenakshi (Sanya Malhotra) in their first meeting for an arranged marriage, he boasts about the never-say-die attitude of engineers.

If you could actually find a solution to relationship problems in professional mantras, we wouldn't have seen marriages breaking like biscuits. Even as an idea for humour, the scene is weak.

Newly-married couples living in a long-distance relationship are a reality because of career challenges. The film also makes sense when Meenakshi has a tough time adjusting with the conservative in-laws.

This interesting conflict is killed immediately when Sundareshwar joins a company where only bachelors are preferred.

No point in discussing the logic behind the idea when the entire film is muddled in such illogical plot points. So Sundareshwar lies to his boss and colleagues that he is single and then begins the film's second act, which is supposed to be funny and interesting but nowhere close to such things.

Sundareshwar is shown as an adult who depends on the internet and disastrous tips from his colleagues to handle long-distance relationships when a bit of common sense could have solved all his problems. Instead of building chemistry between the leads, the screenplay is wasted on a host of characters. The climax is placed in a Rajinikanth movie screening, another desperate attempt from the director to hide his inability to write a coherent story.

The film is a perfect remedy for sleep. It would be wrong to say people didn't expect the result after watching the trailer.

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