Home Delivery Movie Review

There seems to be a barrage of light entertainers of late. If you count the titles from Diwali/Idd week onwards, there has been GARAM MASALA, SHAADI NO. 1, DEEWANE HUYE PAAGAL and now, two more entertainers promise to tickle your funny bone this week, MR. YA MISS and HOME DELIVERY. Whew!

But, unfortunately, promises are meant to be broken. At least as far as HOME DELIVERY is concerned.

Despite having one of the best production houses to back the project [Percept] and the best of resources at his disposal, director Sujoy Ghosh and his team of writers come up with an apology of a script. For, a film like HOME DELIVERY offers nothing to the viewer except boredom.

Want to pose just one vital question to Sujoy: What is the target audience of HOME DELIVERY? If it's those thronging the multiplexes, there's nothing in HOME DELIVERY that they'd find hatke or intriguing. If it's targeted at those who have an appetite for Hrishikesh Mukherjee type of cinema, sorry, HOME DELIVERY isn't a patch on those films. As for the masses, the aam junta, forget it...

In a nutshell, HOME DELIVERY is akin to a brand new car [it's well-shot, thankfully!], but saddled with four flat wheels [story-screenplay, music, drama and performances].

Sunny [Viveik Oberoi] is a 28-year-old writer who has carved a name for himself as a popular agony uncle, Gyan Guru, writing for the 'Times of Hindustan'. Sunny has also managed to bag a prestigious screenplay writing project for director Karan Johar.

While Sunny is cynical about life, Michael [Boman Irani] is optimistic about it. 51-year-old Michael is a simple man, almost childlike and has recently landed a job as a pizza delivery boy at Mummy's Pizza. Michael has sort of an inclination to lose every job he has ever had in two days flat. This time, however, he vows to keep this one, no matter what.

On the eve of Diwali, Sunny has loads of stuff to do and very little time to execute it. He has to meet his screenplay deadline and he's got to avoid his editor's [Juhi Chawla] telephone calls, who is livid that he's bunking work.

But, more importantly, he needs to get his fiancée Jenny [Ayesha Takia] out of the way because he has a date with Maya [Mahima Chaudhary], a South Indian superstar who he has been in love with since as long as he can remember. In this confusion, Sunny forgets that there is no food in his bachelor pad and orders a pizza that Michael is given the task of delivering.

And what Michael delivers to Sunny is much more than just a pizza. Sunny is home delivered life's simple lessons -- right at his doorstep.

The problems with HOME DELIVERY are manifold. But the biggest of all is its sloppy screenplay. There's no movement in the story and to make matters worse, the screenplay is as unexciting as having a month-old pizza. If the effort is to make the viewers laugh, the entire exercise is in futility since there's not one memorable sequence that even makes you flex your facial muscles. In fact, the viewer starts squirming after the first fifteen minutes itself.

Neither does the bitter-sweet romance between Viveik and Ayesha make you feel mushy, nor do the brash neighbors or their antics [Saurabh Shukla, Tiku Talsania] amuse you and not even does Boman Irani's childlike innocence touch the core of your heart. Besides, the track involving the serial killer is also poorly-etched. All through the film, the viewer gets the feeling that Sujoy and his band of writers are completely at sea when it comes to narrating an interesting story in those 2 hours.

If the writing is poor, Sujoy's direction is, to put it mildly, dismal and directionless. The director had handled a few sequences with dexterity in his debut vehicle JHANKAAR BEATS, but he's completely out of sync this time around. Vishal-Shekhar's music is as undistinguished as the screenplay. However, what was the idea behind putting only the mukhdas of a few songs here and there? Why not the entire songs?

Cinematography [Sirsha Ray] is the sole department that stands out in the enterprise. The camerawork is of superior quality, with the visual effects looking attractive. Dialogues [four writers: Sujoy Ghosh, Ritesh Shah, Milap Jhaveri and Suresh Nair] are equally lifeless.

Although the film has a talented cast, with a number of actors making fleeting appearances, the ones who actually stand out are Boman Irani and Victor Banerjee [first-rate in one important scene]. Despite the loose ends, it's Boman performance that stays with you at the end of the screening.

Viveik Oberoi fails to look the part. Also, the fire is clearly missing! Ayesha Takia goes through her role mechanically. Also, she ought to watch her weight, she looks completely shapeless at places. And what exactly did Mahima Chaudhary see in her role? And why does she drop her pallu time and again, even on a TV chat show?

Saurabh Shukla and Tiku Talsania are loud. Arif Zakaria is wasted. Ditto for Karan Johar and Juhi Chawla. The topnotch stars [Abhishek Bachchan, Suniel Shetty, Naseeruddin Shah et al] that make a 10-15 second appearance also don't arouse curiosity.

On the whole, HOME DELIVERY fails to deliver. At the box-office, it's a big disappointment!