WATCHING AISHA (2010) - EMMA, KNIGHTLEY & BOLLYWOOD

Clearly inspired to Austen's Emma, Aisha has all the typical features of a Bollywood romance blockbuster: very good looking actors, easy pop melodies, dances, colourful costumes, beautiful natural settings, fairy-tale atmospheres. If you liked Bride and Prejudice or Bend it like Beckham, you may like this Austenesque parody too. Because this is the impression I got: it sounds more like a parody than a modern day version  of a classic in a different cultural environment .

Since I'm really curious of anything Austen-related and I didn't mind other products of the same kind, I wished to see this film too. "What harm can be done?", I thought, " it'll be a good pastime to see events and characters I know and love from the point of view of a director, scriptwriter, actor". It may be interesting. It was rather  interesting actually. But not that amusing or original. It was beautiful to watch, beautiful was almost anything my sight perceived but nothing more. Ok. Better to stop. You may decide to watch it and even like it, so I don't want to spoil much. 

THE PLOT (from Wikipedia)

Aisha (Sonam Kapoor) is a girl with a simple problem - she has to take others problems into her own hands; and match-making amongst her friends in particular. She is constantly criticized by her friend/neighbor Arjun (Abhay Deol) who advises her to stop meddling with others lives. She is unperturbed and carries on. She tries to make a match between her small town friend Shefali (Amrita Puri) and Randhir (Cyrus Sahukar). 

While at a party Aisha realizes her jealous over Arjun. After the party Arjun and Dhruv get a drink and talk about Aisha, Dhruv tries to act like he is in love with Aisha and insults Arjun. Arjun punch Dhruv and hurts him. She fails in her attempts and in the due course, she tries to match up Shefali with Dhruv (Arunoday Singh) until one day she realizes that love does not come by force. 

She loses her friend Pinky (Ira Dubey) due to her actions who in the end falls in love with Randhir (Cyrus Sahukar). Shefali finds her love in Saurabh (an old friend). Aisha decides to go to Mumbai with Shefali and Dhruv. Shefali thinks that Arjun loves her and Aisha and Shefali have a fight. Shefali tells Aisha of how she had been treating her. She realizes that she had been selfish and arrogant all along, and has mistreated her friends. Finally, she goes back to her best friend (Pinky) and apologizes for her actions. She realizes that she was in love with Arjun; but finds it difficult to express...

Aisha - Emma

She's incredibly beautiful and incredibly spoilt. Even more conceited than Miss Woodhouse herself. It is clear everything she does, she does to be admired. She wants to influence everybody's life and gets furious when something doesn't go the way she expected or someone stresses or notices her misbehaviour. She continuously quarrels with Anjur, her friend/neighbour, she has known all her life long ... 

Anjur - Mr Knightley

Anjur has his sensitivity and his "far-sightedness", but he is no Mr Knightley. He lacks his depth and his wisdom. He is more like a childhood friend, Aisha has always taken for granted, than an older, sensible, affectionate family friend. He has saved her from embarassing situations and still tries to protect her but... he shows off and boasts, which is not very "knightley".

Randhir is a funny character (Mr Elton?) and Shefali a sweet Harriet Smith,  Pinky an extravagant loyal girl friend, and Druhv a dashing Frank Churchill. But the original are so much better!
The problem with Aisha is the screenplay. It never gets deep enough to evoke any emotions in the audience. The film clearly misses the spark and ends up as an average product. However, not an easy task to live up toJane Austen's genius and wit.

It is a fun movie, even though, like Clueless, it's not going to go down as one of my favorites. Give me Emma 1996 the film, ITV Emma and, especially BBC Emma 2009, please!