Aga Bai Arecha (2004) Reviews

• A gem of a movie

  shailu_nonstop2011-02-06

  No doubt about it that movie is inspired from Mel Gibson acted 'What Women Want'. But the story here has a completely different getup and the makeover is done well. Set in the backdrop of Mumbai chawl locales, the protagonist Shrirang(Sanjay Narvekar), has a good family and a decent job, but is always irritated by the act of women. To top on that, his female chauvinist boss always treats the male workers unfairly. While worshiping a Hindu goddess, Shrirang gets the divine power of reading the minds of women. Realizing slowly this power, at first Shrirang feels more irritated and visits a Psychiatrist. The Psychiatrist also turns out to be a woman, but she tells one plain simple thing to Shrirang. 'It all depends on you whether you want to get irritated by this power or take it as a gift to understand women'. Shrirang chooses the 2nd option and after that his life changes completely as he now better understands the women around him(wife, mother, sister and boss) and makes them feel happy. What makes the movie different from the original English version, is the subtlety and the local feel given by the director. Where I felt the English movie to be funny, this movie touches the heart. The family setup, daily lifestyle, the past of Mumbai Textile Industry, middle-class issues are very well depicted. There are no harsh realities or brutal truth but plain life of a middle-class family of Mumbai. The music is good but I am not sure how much non Marathi speakers will understand the softness in the music since it's typical Marathi. The poetic and traditional verses have to be understood to get the flow of the song. After watching this movie, I felt a bit relaxed that amidst situations of adversity there is always opportunity. The opportunity to choose happiness, no matter what state our life is. It's not easy to live, but then it's not that difficult as well. And this theme applies to not only Mumbai life but all places in the world where people are struggling to move ahead. A positive attitude is all what we need.

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• The director made it

  amit_hk20012010-06-17

  The movie borrows main idea from movie, "What women want". The lead character in the movie, Shrirang Deshmukh, can listen what women think. But the tone in which the idea is conveyed and the separate scenes are rendered is far better than it was done in what women want. The flow of the movie can be told as follows: Shrirang (the lead character) has a lot of problem with thinking what women want and his life is messed up by all the women around him including his boss and his wife. Then he gets divine power of being able to listen to what women think. Even if having this power, he faces a lot of problems to deal with this as he gets fed up of listening to women. He listens all kinds of crap by women including jealousy towards other women, their lachrymose at any unimportant thing, their regrets in their lives and what not. The good thing is all the crap he listens to is the story of every other middle class women in Mumbai. But listening to women's thoughts even exacerbates Shrirang's problem and thus he decides to go to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist guides him to the right path and the second part of movie is as easily guessed as anything but again, the director puts a lot of effort in making each and every scene to be best of its kind. The lyrics of "Man udhan varyache" and "malhar vari" is really classic and also the screenplay in the song "Durge durghat bhari" is too good. Director has handled the niceties in the movie with a great effort towards making the scenes perfect. Last but second most important thing in this movie is acting by Sanjay Narvekar (who played Shrirang). He has perfectly performed all sorts of emotions like happiness, confidence, agitation, anger and mainly frustration before he goes to the psychiatrist. In short, the movie is a good conglomeration of simplistic, and yet so amazing, direction by Kedar Shinde with awesome acting by Sanjay Narvekar.

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