Five star rating for What the Fi$# !

I will begin by saying that my rating of 5 stars for What the FI$#! is based on the total delight of being completely  biased and partisan.  This is because our son Mithun Rodwittiya  plays the character of Hooda,  a Haryanvi lout, who attempts to get his lover from Manipur (a boxer and a Mary Kom looker alike!) a professional deal;  and the iddar-uddar tamasha that occurs as a sequence of many events centred around the care taking of a home, a gold fish and a potted money plant, makes up the entire jig-saw  of this film.  This multiple narratives within this comedy has lovely little insights into the India of today, where urban practices and upward mobility leans into street smartness and the altu-faltu of our kismet culture and yaaro ways, and mixes together into the khichadi of metro life. What is refreshing different is that the film never comes across as a pontificating missive or trying to sell a message of any kind. 

The film cleverly allows you to believe you have the upper hand as the voyeur to it all because it lets you know the end right at the start, and then in the end gives it a slight twist,  to spice it up. This is a clever move on the part of the scripting team because it lets each tableaux that unfolds  have its moments of glory without any preamble. It also suggests the typical indian "aisa hota hai na" attitude packaged perhaps rather endearingly wherein you begin to get soft hearted recalling   incidents of irritation from your own back yard from precisely the muddled methods of our quick-fix existences!

Directed by Gurmmeet Singh and starring the affable Dimple Kapadia, this is a definite  must see film. Yes, certainly because you have to whistle loudly the moment Mithun makes his appearance on the big screen (that's mandatory!); but also because it is a film that comes from a type of cinema I want to see more of.  Quirky and with a simple story line, it allows a story-telling of the mundane to be engaged with,  and for cinema to be entertaining without vulgar budgets being involved and gimmicky techno effects to prop it all up. 

"What the Fish" provides vignettes from the everyday that could be anybody's story; and wrapped into the slap-stick humour are some wonderful flashes of what life is all about in the higgledy-piggledy of what makes India this terribly infuriating,  but equally lovable country we live in!

Congratulations to the the cast and crew….Encore! 

And to my Mithun……..

You've come a long way Bebo!