Grandma’s tale a letdown

Detective Naani
Cast:  Ava Mukherjee, Shweta Gulati, Amrita Raichand, Ankur Nayyar, Zain Khan
Director: Romilla Mukherjee
Rating: *

A 75-year-old building society busybody and popular Naani (Ava Mukherjee) becomes a sleuthing grandma when she is the only witness to a crime.

Adopting a Miss Marple-in-a-sari kind of guise, she begins to unravel the dark secrets behind neighbour Yadav’s curtains. Team Naani consists of her two grandchildren, a dog, the ground floor spying neighbour and two romancing teenagers.

If only director Romilla Mukherjee had stuck to the central theme and let Naani dominate. Instead random characters flit in and out and focus shifts for a while (and two songs) to a redundant collegiate love story. And how much make-up are the characters — including the maids — wearing!

Just when Naani looks like she might have got her wits about her after all, she gets captured by the crooks and it is up to grandson Nakul (Zain Khan) to take off where Hari Puttar/Home Alone left off.

At one point the central character is described as ‘total timepass Naani’, which is sadly not how you would describe this film. It’s not intriguing, scary, amusing or even cute. There are few mystery adventures that bore you. This one does