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Cast: Shabana Azmi, Ayesha Dharker, Darshan Zariwala, Manish Acarya, Ajay Naidu
Director: Manish Acharya
Rating: ***
A small film with an ensemble cast, 'Loins of Punjab Presents' delivers as a knock-out comedy full of mirth and toungue-in-cheek humor on the desi foreiegners in a never-seen-before avatar. The film is all about a made-for-TV 'Idol' contest held especially for NRI's in New Jersey and the pranks that each one undertakes to make it to the top. The choice is of course limited, age and color no barrier.
So you have a ruthless philanthropist Rrita Kapoor (Shabana Azmi), an over -protected Preeti Patel (Ishita Sharma) a package deal alongside her over-bearing family of relatives, a reckless actress Sania Rahman (Seeema Rahmani), a statistics spewing love-lorn businessman Vikram Tejwani (Manish Acharya), an American entrepreneurial Yogi Josh Cohen (Michael Raimondi), a bhangra rapper(Ajay Naidu) are all final contestants that have been sniffed out from the raff by three sparingly talented judges and supported by the ridiculously decadent event manager Sudarsh Bokade (Jameel Khan).
The film innovatively fleshes out behind-the-scenes scheming, ruthless bargains, inverse racism, cut-throat ambition, cross-cultural issues of identity, young love and spiritual decadence. The film works on several levels, the script is superlative-extremely well-written and the performances enliven an assemblage of quirky characters, lovingly delineated and endearingly actualised.
Fresh out-of-NYU , Director Manish Acharya's treatment is the film's strongpoint. His narrative is engaging, thought-provoking and flushed with effervescent humor that slips in at the set-up and continues bubbling much after the climax. Acharya's freshness of approach coupled with Hina Saiyada and Christopher Dillon's spiffy editing and a near-perfect length makes room for an enjoyment that goes way beyond all expectation.
The performers too enrich the overall experience with some scintillating in-character display of histrionics. Including Shabana Azmi's calculated Rrita Kapoor, Ayesha Dharker's effortless Opama, and Seema Rahmani's striking Sania Rahman, all performances are scintillating and immensely befitting the narrative spiel engineered by the supremely able Manish Acharya. This is certainly an unexpected feast.
