Aisha

Aisha is Jane Austen on Janpath. I was never a big fan of Jane Austen's novels, though I do understand they filled social and literary vacuum in nineteenth century chick-lit. To me Austen's novels gave a thru-the-looking-glass view into the world of 19th century English ladies, their frivolous concerns and travails, in the end everything boiled to one(or many) "man"-hunt. I didn't know Aisha was an adaptation of Emma, not that it'd have made any difference to me since at this late age I'd not be able to distinguish one Austen heroine from another even if they came with name tags.

In Aisha, Sonam Kapoor has been offered a generous role and she does make use of it perfectly, so does all the name-brands with over-the-top brand placement. The movie looks like a fashion magazine, which taunts their middle class readers with glossy ads of unattainable yet coveted bric-brac like say a Versace scarf for $5000 or a Hermes purse for $8000. It always makes you wonder about the kind of people who'd own such a thing, Carly Simon once wrote and performed a hit single about this particular sub-species: Here it is, take it as a unisex message.

The rest of the cast is well chosen, from Abhay Deol to Ira Dubey to Cyrus Sahukar, everyone plays the stereotypes they have been entrusted with quite convincingly. The film is a chick flick and has to be taken lightly if your wife insists that you watch it with her.It is well shot and executed(thumbs up to the director, Rajashree Ojha) and has a decent sound track by Amit Trivedi and lyrics by Javed Akhtar.