Mimi Review will it worth to watch

Rating: 10/10

More movie details: Mimi

Posted On: 29 Jan 2023 10:26:04 pm IST | By Movies Review

Buried somewhere inside Mimi is a
moving story about parenting

and what it takes to love and raise a child.

But before we get here, which
is in the last 15 minutes or so,

we have to endure over two hours of
a simpering, poorly written dramedy,

about a 25-year-old woman in Rajasthan,
who agrees to become a surrogate mother,

so that she can fund her dream
to become a Bollywood heroine.

Mimi is introduced to us with a dance number.

The lyrics of the song goes:
"Bikaneri chokri, santre ki tokri".

An American couple, Summer and John, watch her

and decide that a healthy, lithe girl like Mimi,
would be the perfect vessel to carry their child.

Their driver Bhanu brokers the deal.

Mimi lies to her parents, that
she is going to shoot a film,

when in reality, she moves into the
home of her close friend Shama.

She plans to deliver the baby, get the
money and then move to Mumbai.

But at some point, Summer and John get
cold feet and abandon Mimi and their child.

Mimi is a remake of the National Award-winning
2011 Marathi film, Mala Aai Vahhaychy!

It’s been adapted in Hindi by director Laxman Utekar,
who co-wrote it with Rohan Shankar.

Laxman earlier made Luka Chuppi,
which also had Kriti Sanon in the lead.

I haven’t seen the original, but Laxman and Rohan
construct a screenplay in which the biggest ambition

is to cushion the complexities of
surrogacy with breezy comedy.

Even in emotionally charged situations – like Mimi’s
parents discovering that their daughter lied to them –

there is an attempt at delivering laughs,
mainly through the character of

Bhanu who goes along with
Mimi’s lie, that he is the father.

But for these switches in tonality
to be seamless, the writing

and performances needed to have more depth and nuance.

A film that managed to combine thorny issues
with a light touch is Jude Anthany Joseph’s, Sara’s,

also about a young woman grappling with pregnancy.

She goes against the wishes of her family and her husband

and decides not to have a baby,
because she wants to be a filmmaker.

In a country in which motherhood is accorded
celestial status, this is a tough story to sell,

but Jude and his leading lady, the superb Anna Ben,

make a persuasive argument for
a woman making her own choices.

In contrast, Mimi completely sidesteps
these polarizing questions,

when Mimi’s baby is born, her dreams
are abandoned without a debate.

In one scene, Mimi's mother tells her,
‘Devaki bhi tu Yashoda bhi tu.’

And here’s what I found even more problematic,
Mimi delivers a baby boy with fair skin and blue eyes.

Which causes crowds to gather outside their house.

Bhanu becomes a local star with random men

accosting him, to ask how he managed
to father such a fair child.

The grandparents also fall in love instantly.

The film is attempting to showcase our
color bias, but it also ends up bolstering it.

Would the family be so fawning,
if the child were less beautiful?

Or, if the child had been born differently abled,
as a doctor says it might have been?

Again, Mimi doesn’t want to go
into these darker spaces.

Mimi is content to operate at a
simplistic, superficial level.

Laxman puts together a roster of terrific actors,

Pankaj Tripathi, Supriya Pathak, Manoj Pahwa
and Sai Tamhankar,

but he doesn’t give them enough to do.

As usual, Pankaj is the best thing in the movie,
working hard to infuse life and layers into Bhanu.

But Mimi rests on Kriti’s shoulders.

She also works hard – putting on weight,
working with a Rajasthani accent.

In the climax, she is able to summon a
wellspring of emotion,

but largely her efforts are undermined by the script

and her own inability to let go
of synthetic Bollywood glamour.

Even when Mimi is screaming in pain in
childbirth, her lipstick is in place.
.