Makarand Deshpande is a noted theatre and film actor
who has given many powerful performances in a lot of movies that have
won him accolades. He has also ventured into the directorial arena and
unfortunately this journey hasn’t been quite a success. His latest film
‘Sona Spa’ that stars the very talented Naseeruddin Shah along with
actors Aahana Kumrah, Shruti Vyas and Pooja Pradhan. The movie releases
today, let’s see how it fares…
Story:
The movie starts with Baba Dayanand (Naseeruddin Shah), who is the man behind the concept of Sona Spa, explaining the concept from outer space (quite literally). The interesting thing about Sona Spa is
that it sells sleep at the cost of 2500 rupees an hour! This means that
the sleep workers sleep on behalf of the client who can stay awake and
complete their other chores in parallel. The catch here is that the
sleep workers also have the access to the client’s dreams while sleeping
for them. The Mumbai branch of Sona Spa is operated by Indu madam
(Pooja Pradhan) where Rucha (Shruti Vyas) and Ritu (Ahana Kumrah) work
as sleep workers with their own set of troubles with life. While Rucha
is a rich brat dealing with her father’s insomnia, Ritu is a
well-mannered girl who deals with her traumatized sister and a comatose
father. Sona Spa also has a senior employee, Meenakshi (Nivedita
Bhattacharya), who is a prostitute turned ‘sleep worker’.
The rest of
the movie is about how the two young girls, ‘who btw only sleep for you
and not with you (bummer)’, deal with their client’s dreams and at the
same time their own problems in life.
Positive Points:
Director Makarand Deshpande has chosen a concept
that goes well with today’s fragmented and stressed lives where all a
sleep deprived person needs is a few hours of sound sleep.
Naseeruddin Shah’s depiction as a baba is good. The two young talents
Aahana Kumrah and Shruti Vyas have played their parts well while
Nivedita shows off her talent as prostitute in a lucknowi attire and
accent.
Negative Points:
We would like to start
by asking Naseer Sir, about ‘what was he thinking’ when he signed up
for this film? Throughout the film, the very talented actor is shown
talking through a TV screen at the spa
since he is leading a very comfortable life in Seattle where there are
more sleep deprived people! Ahana and Shruti, the two very talented
theatre artists, are absolutely wasted in the movie. To top it all,
there Pooja Pradhan, who should probably go back to her previous profession of modeling as she was good at that atleast. Here she looks more like a hotel stewardess than an entrepreneur.
Makarand Deshpande has successfully helmed a tale
that makes sense only in few parts. The other characters including the
police officer, a rich man (with a weird disorder of killing his lovers
in dream) and Indu’s mentally charged brother have overplayed their
roles.
Technical aspects:
The only one song in the film ‘Neend Ka Bijness’ is played during the interval and does no good for the film. Makarand, as a director,
fails to entice the viewers with a confusing script where some of the
sequences are left half-way while some of them don’t make sense at all.
The filmmaker selects an interesting topic but executes it in a bizarre way.
Cinematography by Rajeev Jain is just about OK
thanks to his framing of the spa which is noteworthy. The background
score by Shailendra Barve is decent. Editing by Biren Joyti Mohanty is
one aspect that could have been totally worked upon.
Verdict:
On a whole, Sona Spa is one movie that despite
dealing with a good concept and talented theater artistes, fails to be
executed properly. This is one confused saga that can be easily missed
without any regrets. However, if you are looking forward for a sound sleep, then do visit a screening of Sona Spa since that will definitely put you to sleep!
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