STORY: A series of misadventures of envious small-time artistes sabotage a relationship, and fail to strike a chord with the audience.
REVIEW: ‘Is she Raju?’ revolves around spiteful characters, striving to make it to the television industry in their own twisted ways. Their stories intertwine with Raju (Aditi Bhagat), who handles the pre-production of TV serials, and a struggling screenwriter Madhav (Ansh Gupta), resulting in a bizarre tale of love, friendship and vengeance.
Random characters introduce themselves and vanish without a trace. It starts off with two carefree gate-crashers who barge into Raju’s party, and are made to strip and wash dishes when caught. In another scene, the sex-crazed wife of a shady filmmaker flirts with her tenant Madhav, who is then kicked out of the house. Such fragments of unrelated stories drag on until a major chuck of the movie is over, and you desperately try to make sense of it all. The abrupt background tunes simply add to the misery.
When the plot finally unfolds, disgruntled characters team up to sabotage the relationship of Madhav and Raju, who were only trying to break the monotony by introducing new story-lines in the TV industry. Later, all the personal and professional differences are set aside, and these lovers reconcile with the help of the same antagonists.
Even though the performances by some of the actors were fairly decent, they could not shine due to the weak screenplay. It seems as though the film’s screenwriters were trying too hard to play it safe, for they firmly stuck to stereotypes. From an overtly promiscuous wife to a sleazy writer and from transphobia to desperate actors being dragged into porn films, everything that has already been done to death in the name of cheap comedy was presented in this film. All in all, you’ll have too many reasons to either cringe or laugh at their expense.
