E-Paper
Maja Ma review: Madhuri Dixit's movie is the most Ayushmann Khurrana movie without an Ayushmann Khurrana
Maja Ma movie review: Madhuri Dixit stars as lead in Prime Video's latest social comedy about a woman in closet.
Ancient and a bit too hopeful at the same time, Maja Ma is a weird concoction served on colourful, 'social comedy' platter. This story of a woman hiding deep in the closet up until her 50s is a disappointing watch for multiple reasons, including, but not limited to the worst American accents you've ever heard.
Madhuri Dixit plays a Gujarati mother of two, the dancing queen of her Vrindavan Society, aarti-leader and a perfect wife on all counts except one. During a screaming session with her very liberal, very testing daughter (Shrishti Shrivastava), she lets slip that she is a lesbian. And in the laziest piece of writing and series of events, the truth is revealed not just to her entire family but also her neighbours, and most damningly, her son's (Ritwik Bhowmick) to-be in-laws.
The NRI in-laws are played by always watchable Sheeba Chaddha and Rajit Kapur. However, here, they are a curse to tolerate from the get go. With their fake American accents, insufferable, unsubtle snobbishness, a perennial hard-on for traditions and culture, they are the true villains of the story, but only caricaturish-ly so. Their daughter (Barkha Singh), however sweet, understanding and kind she may be, also assaults your ears with her accent that travels in and out of a scene whenever it pleases. It's all a mess that could have been easily avoided.
Another messy bit – Maja Ma wants to live in the modern and orthodox worlds at the same time. The woman is a closeted lesbian but she has to the perfect emblem of womanhood to be taken seriously. Madhuri's Pallavi cooks, cleans, dances and helps her husband win local elections, and only then is she deemed worthy of a 'second chance'. Then there is the entire bit about lie detector tests, taking her to phoney babas to beat the gay out of her. All done with subtleness of a jackhammer. The family turns against her and is just as easily won back with some filmy dialogue, sheer good luck and if all else fails, someone can always be given cancer.
Madhuri, in one of her few lead-starring roles since returns from the US herself, is mostly good to watch. Even when going on and on about hiding her secret, making angry and sometime desperate eyes at her daughter to sharing the sheer sadness of not being involved in the locality's aarti program for the first time, Madhuri is believable and loveable. While she stays in the 'abhagan' territory for most of the film, the turnaround at the end is cathartic enough.
The credit for best performance still goes to Simone Singh as Pallavi's ex-flame with the spiciest words for rude NRIs. In a moment that clearly belonged in a different and better movie, Simone gives Sheeba a warm serving of honey right in her ear that almost makes you want to leave your seat and applaud for finally shutting up the bad accent. Even Sheeba almost makes up for that accent when the sweet, straight Punjabi comes gushing through in the end.
But some good Punjabi swearing does not make up for totally unnecessary, long scenes about accidentally engorged penises, nonsense dance items for the glory of America, boasting about virgin families and other generic, unfunny fillers. With its message in modernity, family relationships and social injustices, Maja Ma was only missing an Ayushmann Khurrana. He, who has made an entire career with a spate of such films would fit right in. But even he knows that being actually funny is key. All else comes secondary. Let Maja Ma be another lesson in why social comedies will never work without the ‘comedy’ bit.
