Film Review - Hawaizaada

Flight of Fancy

Film: Hawaizaada

Cast: Ayushmann Khurrana, Pallavi Sharda, Mithun Chakraborty

Directed by: Vibhu Puri

Duration: 2 hrs 37 mins

Rating: * 1 / 2

Hawaizaada supposedly based on the exploits of an Indian pioneer called Shivkar Talpade, is a long, exhausting and excruciating account that leaves you running for cover by the end. This flight of fancy never takes because the screenplay is all over the place. It attempts to integrate romance, adventure, science (pseudo), singing, dancing and all the ingredients of a typical Bollyood film.

Filmmakers have to make up their mind – either you make a biopic by sticking to the facts or let your imagination let loose but don’t give a heady concoction of facts and fiction, mostly the latter. Hawaizaada is more Pataal Bhairavi than anything else.

There isn’t much evidence to prove what Shivkar Bapuji Talpade did at the turn of the 19^th century. He is credited with constructing the first unmanned plane in 1895. Fair enough, this premise could make for an interesting narrative. But instead what we get is Talpade (Khurrana) as a young man who falls in love with a courtesan (Pallavi Sharda) and pursues her with considerable vigor.

Good old Mithun plays an oddball scientist, reminding you of Christopher Lloyd in Back To The Future. He has almost cracked the formula of how to make a plane fly. This makes the Brits very suspicious and angry. As the audience, you couldn’t care less about any of them by now.

With the odd unconvincing reference to the plane not to mention the non-existent science, it follows the romance track and there is a song for almost every occasion dampening the already slow pace further.

While the visuals are impressive and considerable money seems to have been spent on the sets, it all comes to a naught. The least you expect is a gripping climax but it fails on that count as well with all the jingoism that it displays.

Published in The Navhind Times on 1st February 2015

www.twitter.com/sachinchatte