Do experiments always succeed? Not really. But should one stop experimenting? These are some of the questions that come in mind after one has finished watching Sujoy Ghosh's 'Home Delivery' who had come up with a delightful 'Jhankaar Beats' a few years back. While 'Jhankaar Beats' was one of the first commercial 'multiplex' movies to succeed, same cannot be predicted for 'Home Delivery' that neither takes off nor lands on a euphoric note. Yes, one can see that pains would have gone into making this experimental idea come alive on screen but sadly the final outcome is soggy and never-ending. One feels bad for the director as there was much more expected from him after a path breaking 'Jhankaar Beats'. Even if you leave Jhankaar Beats aside and treat Home Delivery as a separate entity altogether, its a movie that is difficult to digest.
The movie traces 2 days in the life of Sunny Chopra [Viveik Anand Oberoi], a columnist with the newspaper 'Times Of Hindustan' who thinks of himself as a 'know all' and has little regard for the customs and behavior of society. Jenny [Ayesha Takia] lives-in with him and is a sweet and innocent girl who is madly in love with him. In short, she is his complete opposite. Diwali is round the corner and Sunny has numerous things to handle. He has to bunk his office and mislead his boss Parvati [Juhi Chawla] since he needs to come up with a script for Karan Johar. Meanwhile he also needs to tackle his neighbors Pandey [Saurabh Shukla] and Gungunani [Tiku Talsania] who keep knocking his doors at inopportune moments.
To make things further complicated, he comes across his childhood fantasy Maya [Mahima Chaudhary], an actress beyond her prime, who was once a South Indian star and since then has dabbled in numerous regional projects. She dreams of working in a big Hindi movie and sees Sunny as a person who could help her realize that dream. She plans to visit his house and for this he needs to keep Jenny out. Meanwhile there is a serial killer P3P (Page 3 Psychopath) [Arif Zakaria] on the prowl and his next target is Maya. Deadlines, neighbors, love, lust and to further make Sunny's life exciting enters Michael [Boman Irani], a 50 plus Pizza delivery boy!
How all these factors combined together change the prospective of Sunny's life forms the crux of the story!
A plot like this can be told in either a conventional manner or presented entirely differently in a way that matches the vision of a new age director. Sujoy Ghosh obviously chooses the latter [nothing harmful in that] but an idea that would have looked wonderful on paper doesn't really come across as conventional on screen. Things tend to turn tiresome after some point of time and though there are occasional giggles and laughs at places, the final outcome leaves one a bit cold.
The first half is still reasonable with a viewer coming up with mixed reactions. One either loves it or hates it because one watches it with a different telescopic view altogether. One knows that the movie has been shot and presented differently and hence keeping that into consideration one expects the movie to take a turn for the better with the entry of Michael's character in Sunny's life. But sadly there is not much happening in the second half with things dragging on for the rest of the part. Though much had been said about Michael's innocence rubbing off on Sunny to make him a much improved person, that doesn't really cut across with the viewer in a convincing manner.
Some things that are really striking about the movie is the entire shot taking [that was the key strong point of Jhankaar Beats too], cinematography [Sirsha Ray], art by Mansi Mehta [Sunny's apartment looks extremely contemporary and real] and sound design. One expected the music by Vishal Shekhar to go well with the situation but in the movie has been relega
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