This isn’t cricket

Cricketers should stick to their day jobs — which is playing the sport or commenting on it on TV.

Acting is clearly not their forte.

Today, it is perhaps partly the popularity of Mahie Gill, after Dev D and Gulaal and partly the absence of any credible software at present that prompted the distributors to change her credit from Rimpy Gill to Mahie and release this film, made in 2003, now. Since this was the first film she shot, Mahie is lucky this is not her first release otherwise she might have joined the ranks of one-film-wonder B-grade heroines.

Every actor in this spoof/love story/con-act/whatever has been dubbed at a high decibel. It is as if the director and producers picked up a ‘What not to do in a Hindi movie based on films of the 80s’ list and applied it here. So the heroine wakes up with full make up.

A kind physiotherapist, she wheels in a squeaking trolley of breakfast to the invalid and aging rich grandmother (with a big bad wig). In a month of service, she has reduced the old lady’s cholesterol, brought her blood sugar down to normal and got her up from her wheelchair and walking and encouraged her to forgive her ostracised grandson Ajay (Ajay Jadeja, oh dear), who also happens to be the miracle worker’s boyfriend.

This story is a potential film script being narrated by a former cricketer (Vinod Kambli, double oh dear) to a bunch of children. The plot includes many con-people after grandma’s wealth including her valet, lawyer and a local goon.

While some actors do spoof it up, the others play it seriously so it is hard to know what writer-director VK Kumar’s intention is. The best laugh of the film comes at the end, with the disclaimer: ‘This is a work of fiction; any similarity to any person living or dead is purely coincidental’. One certainly hopes so.

Pal Pal Dil Ke Ssaat 
Cast: Ajay Jadeja, Mahie Gill, Vinod Kambli
Director: V K Kumar
Rating: *