Watching Mithya Now

We are finally getting around to watching Mithya.

This movie has been recommended by many readers of the SearchIndia.com blog.

Directed by Rajat Kapoor, Mithya features Ranvir Shorey, Neha Dhupia, Naseeruddin Shah, Saurabh Shukla and Manu Rishi.

We’ll update this post after we finish the movie.

Update (after watching the movie):

Mithya is a decent movie and Ranvir Shorey delivers a decent performance as an aspiring actor caught up in a whirlpool of circumstances outside his control.

But the story of an everyday lookalike guy replacing a dreaded gangster has been beaten to death in the old Billa (Rajinikanth), new Billa (Ajith), old Don (Amitabh Bachchan) and new Don (Shahrukh Khan).

Sure there are some differences between Mithya and Billa/Don but to tell the audience that a bunch of hardened gangsters wouldn’t be able to quickly identify that their leader is an impostor is to stretch credulity and mock our intelligence.

And the amnesia angle introduced later is so tiresome. In how many gazillion Hindi movies have we seen that.

We didn’t think too highly of Nehu Dhupia in this movie too. If she hasn’t matured as an actress by now, we guess she never will.

Neha plays the moll of one of the gangsters and an aspiring actress.

Naseeruddin Shah and Saurabh Shukla as the gangsters Gawde and Shetty respectively are effective. Both are fine actors and it would be a surprise if they weren’t.

Still, the inadequacie of the story aside Mithya is a refreshing change from the usual Bollywood balderdash.

Bottomline, Mithya is a movie worth watching.

5 Responses to "Watching Mithya Now"

  1. Stitha   March 4, 2009 at 1:09 am

    Mithya is not just a decent movie . It’s the best movie made in Hindi last year. (May be second best, after Oye lucky ! lucky Oye) .

    I might have liked the movie because I haven’t seen any ‘Don’ movies mentioned above. Also I might I have liked because the movie name made me to think philosophically.

    You said : “that a bunch of hardened gangsters wouldn’t be able to quickly identify that their leader is an impostor is to stretch credulity and mock our intelligence.”

    – You didn’t get the point i believe. Let’s divide the leader life in to two . The one before the head accident and the one after it .
    1) In the life before the head accident, it’s so unusual for the gangsters to believe ” Hey look! our beloved and dreaded leader is behaving differently, so he must be a different person. That means (i) Either there exists a person who is exactly same as our leader or (ii) Some body is controlling our leader through non physical means (you can imagine all the scientific, psycho things, force fields etc etc ) ” .
    2) That question should not arise after the head accident.
    In both 1 and 2 , the movie is fine. So I don’t see any problems in the story there.

    SearchIndia.com Responds:

    Not convinced by your responses plus as we wrote, we’ve seen four Indian movies – Billa (2) and Don (2) – where you have a dreaded gangster being replaced by a lookalike.

    To repeat ourselves, Mithya is a decent movie.

  2. Stitha   March 4, 2009 at 2:03 pm

    by default, any one would not be convinced by just “not convinced by your responses”.

    I just wanted to know what exactly you meant by an “imposter”. Even if suppose gangsters had identified the differences in the behavior (I think Harsh Chaya must have even though the leader was trained in the Gawde’s camp – alas! the leader had such a short life before the head injury to still raise the doubts) what would they have thought?.
    It’s unusual for me to think that a person with exactly same face exists if i sense a behavioural/attitudinal change in that person.

    The bottom line is I just felt the script to be perfect though it dealt with a complex story of this kind.

    SearchIndia.com Responds:

    1. As Indian actress Gul Panag said the other day, ‘Bollywood doesn’t just impact our lifestyle; it impacts our psyche, our very being!’

    After two Dons and two Billas, if any gangster in India behaves differently even for a nanosecond, the underlings will hack him to death in minutes.

    2. This idea of ‘two people with the same face’ has been beaten to death in Hindi, Tamil et al movies. We’ve given four examples of Don (2) and Billa (2).

    Plus surely, there are many more which we can’t offhand recollect. OK, here’s another example – the old Hema Malini-Sanjeev Kumar Seeta Aur Geeta with a different story, of course.

    3. You write: I just wanted to know what exactly you meant by an “imposter”.

    What part of Impostor don’t you understand? We use the word in the dictionary sense – one who assumes a false identity for the purpose of deception.

    That an impostor of a dreaded gangster can come home without anyone realizing that he’s not the real one boggles the imagination.

    Even when the impostor behaves like an oddball – as in the encounter with the film producer Kuku, with his wife, at the dinner table, at the school and later at the farmhouse….

    4. Impersonation of a dead gangster, as we’ve said many times, has been dealt with by Amitabh Bachchan, Shahrukh Khan, Rajinikanth, Ajith and who knows how many others.

  3. guruprasad.s   March 7, 2009 at 4:31 pm

    I found Mithya very watchable.

    Get hold of Oye Lucky Lucky Oye and watch it.
    Unfortunately the movie was released during 26/11 Mumbai blasts, which completely took the interest out of the movie. Not to say that the movie would have been a big grosser if 26/11 had not happened, but 26/11 didnt help OLLO.

    Abhay Deol as a trickster and thief gives a performance that most male ‘stars’ of Bollywood today are incapable of.

    Others have done well too. The movie was small on budget (that explains Paresh Rawal in three roles), but big on ambition. Dont miss this movie.

    SearchIndia.com Responds:

    We’ll try to watch Oye Lucky Lucky Oye.

    We like Abhay Deol, the only Deol after Dharmendra who can act. Paresh Rawal is a decent actor too. Seen him in countless Bollywood films.

    BTW, who are the top three heroes and heroines in Kannada now?

  4. guruprasad.s   March 7, 2009 at 6:24 pm

    Ganesh (of Mungaaru Male fame) and Sudeep (actor and director) are decent actors among the new crop.

    Sudeep has almost seen a decade in Kannada film industry.

    Ramesh Arvind and old warhorse Vishnuvardhan continue to do well, mostly.

    Ramesh is a decent director too.

    Darshan Toogudeep (son of yesteryear villian Toogudeep Srinivas) has also done some good work.
    Late Dr.Raj’s youngest son Puneet is a good dancer, but I am not sure of his acting.

    Among the actresses, Ramya (Divya Spandana of Vaaranam Aiyaram) is one of the better actresses.
    Not sure of 2nd and 3rd spots.

    On the whole, Kannada film industry has produced more number of decent movies (relatively) of late (last 2-3 years), than in the years earlier. There is some good music as well.

    But one fears that one may never again get to see talents as towering as Dr.Raj, Vishnuvardhan and Shankar Nag (more as director).

    In fact, R.K.Narayan, after watching Malgudi Days (directed by Shankar Nag and relayed on Doordarshan) commented that Shankar Nag had brought Malgudi to life on celluloid, exactly as RKN himself had visualized. High praise coming from RKN, who had serious differences with Vijay ‘Goldie’ Anand (brother of Dev Anand and director of Guide) after the making of Guide, a movie based on RKN’s novel The Guide.

    SearchIndia.com Responds:

    Thanks.

    One of these days, we’ll watch Mungaaru Male (we’ve have heard so much about it). Never heard of Sudeep, Darshan or Ramesh Arvind before.

    We’ve seen Darshan’s father Toogudeep Srinivas in the old Shankar Nag-Manjula movie – Seetha Ramu. The crappy movie was about some brain transplant/revenge nonsense but had some nice songs (Onde Ondu Aaseyu et al).

    Ramya a.k.a. Divya Spandana did not do a great job in Vaaranam Aayiram (but she didn’t do much damage either).

  5. Amy آصف Dala   March 7, 2009 at 7:43 pm

    Ramesh Aravind has acted in quite many Tamil movies…

    His first directorial venture “Raama Shaama Bhaama” is a remake of “Sati Leelavati”.. easily one of Kamal’s best movies.

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