Masand's Verdict: Saas Bahu Aur Sensex

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Saas Bahu Aur Sensex, which releases at cinemas this week, made me laugh more than any other film has recently. It's a movie so dim-witted, you have no choice but to laugh at its absurdities because if you were to take it any more seriously, you might tear your hair out in frustration.

Written and directed by Shona Urvashi, Saas Bahu Aur Sensex is a picture whose head I couldn't make out from its tail. Somewhere in that mangled mess of a screenplay, I suppose the film intended to make the point that all women ought to become financially independent, and that understanding and investing in the stock market could be a means to achieve that end.

Now that's a noble thought, sure.

But the way the film goes about making that point has to be seen to be believed.

Kirron Kher plays the recently divorced Vinita Sen, who moves from Kolkata to Mumbai with her daughter Nitya (played by Tanushree Dutta) to start life afresh. She fast makes friends with the assortment of kitty-party housewives who reside in the same building complex, but doesn't seem to share their enthusiasm for saas-bahu soaps and gossip sessions.

Vinita's immediate concern is organizing finances so she can run her home. A meeting with a cranky old Parsi stockbroker Feroz Sethna (played by Farooque Shaikh) leads Vinita to develop an active interest in the stock market; an interest that is subsequently picked up by her idle-minded kitty-party friends who switch from watching soaps to watching the Sensex.

Amidst all this drama, the film also includes a romantic track between younger residents of this housing society - the Sindhi couple's earnest son Ritesh (played by Ankur Khanna) is in love with the Maharashtrian housewife's younger sister Keerti (played by Masumeh Makhija). Nitya meanwhile, Mrs Sen's daughter, has developed a soft spot for Ritesh and is heartbroken when she sees him wasting his love on the selfish, gold-digging Keerti. In a plot turn that is too exaggerated to even explain here, this romantic angle crosses paths with the film's main premise of housewives-turned-stock-investors.

Sloppier than a class four English essay, the script of Saas Bahu Aur Sensex is its biggest failing. Ridden with cultural sterotypes like the poha-eating Maharashtrians, the Haang-Kaang-obsessed Sindhis, and the Kamalahaasan-inspired Tamilians, the film alternates between predictable and bizarre. The clunky dialogue makes you cringe with embarrassment as female actors make cheap sex jokes; and snippets of badly-pronounced Sindhi and Bengali are strewn about by poor actors. This is a film that has no idea which direction it wants to go in; too many things are going on all at once, but few make any sense at all. Half an hour into the film and you know it's not going to get any better.

Strangely for a film in which stock trading plays such a pivotal role, the director never really displays more than just a superficial understanding of the subject herself. The film cuts regularly to a business channel and its coverage of the ever-fluctuating Sensex, but does so in an almost obligatory manner, never really getting into the whys and hows behind the fluctuations. Instead the film preoccupies itself with pedestrian humour.

The film's crippling blow is its ensemble cast and their over-the-top acting - Ankur Khanna, Lilette Dubey, Sharon Prabhakar, Farid Currim, they're all guilty of it. In particular Masumeh Makhija stands out with a performance that is possibly the worst by any actress since Nisha Kothari in "Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag". Masumeh has that squeaky, itsy-bitsy piped-up voice that combines with cutesy dialogue to make her more or less insufferable. For the most part, however, it's her chest that does the emoting.

Tanushreee Dutta, on the other hand, is likeable in a role that requires minimal speaking. Kirron Kher, an actress of immense talent, is constricted in what is perhaps the only 'straight' role in this overstated comedy. She has a few moments of real brilliance, but those aside, she's grossly wasted. Saas Bahu Aur Sensex has only one thing going for it and that is Farooque Shaikh. He slips into the character of Sethna, a stereotype once again, but plays it with just the right amount of believability. The actor towers above the others with the most endearing performance in this film, and you long for him to appear on screen every time the ridiculous screenplay digresses to other characters.

For his performance alone the film might justify the price of a ticket. And for his performance alone, I'm going with one out of five for director Shona Urvashi's Saas Bahu Aur Sensex. Under the guise of being a progressive film, it's really a dull and senseless one.

Rating: 1 / 5 (Poor)