Milli

Director Mathukutty Xavier’s debut film Helen had been a success in every measure of the word in 2019.

Apart from wide-spread critical acclaim, it won Mathukutty the Best Debut Film of a Director and Ranjit Ambady Best Make-up Artist at the 67th National Film Awards, and at the 50th Kerala State Film Awards, Best Make-up Artist and a Special Mention award for debuting actress Anna Ben, followed by several wins and nominations in other award shows.

It goes without saying that the Malayalam-language film had widespread critical acclaim as well; so much of it, in fact, that it was remade in Tamil in 2021, with an Odia adaptation coming out soon. With so much hype, a Bollywood adaptation was inevitable.

Enter producer Boney Kapoor, whose daughter Janhvi Kapoor could potentially be perfect casting for what could very well be an edge-of-your-seat survival thriller.

More than protection from the cold, Mili needs a lot of rethinking and rewrites. The characters in Double XL come across as unlikeable youngsters who need to figure themselves out

A young girl — called Mili (Kapoor) in this version — the apple of her dad’s (Manoj Pahwa) eye and a BSc. Nursing graduate, studies for IELT’s while dogging her days away at a fast-food place. She has a boyfriend (Sunny Kaushal) her dad doesn’t know about, whom she pushes to get a job. Unlike usual larger than life film heroes, these people contend with the very problems any honest middle, lower-middle class people feel everyday: the rising cost of living and the search for a better future.

One day, Mili gets locked in the restaurant’s freezer. With temperatures plummeting to minus 18 degrees, Mili uses her wits to survive the night. Make that: only if she would have used her wits.

The minimalist, somewhat grounded survival story with a pitch-perfect relationship arc between the father and the daughter, is wholesome, perfect fodder for wide-spread adaptations, if only the puerility were taken out in the screenplays’ adaptation.

More than thawing the cold, Mili needs a lot of rethinking and rewrites.

The two-hour-six-minute-long film’s main selling point is its survival-against-dire-odds theme, which gives ample opportunity to include tension-raising highpoints in the latter half of the film; only, the opportunities never come to pass.

The last thing Mili thinks of to save herself is the first option anyone would think of. Her prior attempts — most of them pointless and mind-numbingly silly — only highlight the amateurism of the storytellers; the only response they successfully elicit from the audience are groans and eye rolls.

One is immediately reminded of survival thrillers, such as the recently released The Fall or 127 Hours, The Shallows and Buried. These stories twist the incidents to make us care for the characters.

Here, the task of caring falls hard on the shoulders of A.R. Rahman’s soundtrack which, like the screenplay and direction, achieves nothing.

Double XL

Speaking of amateurish, there’s Double XL, a comedy-drama starring Huma Qureshi and Sonakshi Sinha, about body-positivity. Like Mili, the movie debuted at Netflix’s top spot, but slid down to second place when the former started trending.

This two-hour-five-minute-long film has two overweight characters — don’t blame me, they use the word for themselves — and their quests to make a name for themselves and, perhaps, discover the idea of body-positivity in the process.

Rajshri (Qureshi) is a living encyclopedia on cricket, who aspires to be an analyst-cum-anchor, but is not even interviewed for the job because she is a tad on the heavy side. Saira (Sinha), with her neck-tattoos, mid-lip piercing and hair-tips dyed green, is a designer whose aspirations to make it big is to make comfortable clothes (who in their right mind makes uncomfortable clothes for the masses, I ask you?!).

In a happy twist of fate, the two women bond trading tissues while sobbing in the ladies’ room, and decide to team up. Saira has to shoot a spec commercial in London (she could have done it in India easy), and Rajshri, a mass-com graduate who has made a commercial for cable for a local vendor, is hired as a director.

Tagging along with the two is a cinematographer (Mahat Raghavendra), a Tamil-speaking wildlife documentary shooter whose Hindi is bad (it is not), and a sharp line-producer Zorawar Rehmani (Zaheer Iqbal), whose oft-repeated joke doesn’t help the film at all. Running around with a Canon DSLR on a gimbal (wow, what high budgets they have, one thinks), they sweet talk natives into modelling for their spec ad.

The screenplay (by Mudassar Aziz, of Pati Patni Aur Woh and Happy Bhaaj Jayegi, and Sasha Singh), dialogues, production design and direction (by Satram Ramani) swing between pedestrian and substandard.

There is a feel-good vibe in the film (Netflix tags it as such), but the characters, when they emote or delve into exposition, come across as unlikable youngsters who need to figure themselves out.

While one does find Rajshri’s story somewhat plausible, Saira’s character arc, her sense of conviction — and her talent for making atrocious clothes — require a trip back to the drawing board, along with a better screenwriter.

Mili, rated suitable for ages 16 and over, streams at the number one spot on Netflix. Double XL is rated suitable for ages 13 and over, and has to make do with the runner-up position. Both titles bombed hard when they were released in cinemas earlier this year, probably because neither film rises above mediocrity at best

Published in Dawn, ICON, January 8th, 2023