Kuchh Meetha Ho Jaye - 2005

Story

"A Day in the Life of a Soporific Airport" is how this unusual, episodic, romantic comedy should have been subtitled.

A couple on the brink of a divorce, a husband whose wife ill-treats him, an Italy-returned pompous dude, a pregnant airhostess who has just rejected a pilot's sympathetic shoulder, an army man who wants to get remarried when his son is just out of his honeymoon...

Two teenagers who meet after discovering love on the Internet, a sloshed airport manager who runs into his ex-flame now married to a sore man... The characters flow fast, though not furiously, from debutant director Samar Khan's handsomely mounted, beautifully visualized airport-lounge drama.

Mellow in mood and musical in the treatment of its stagy characterizations, "Kucch Meetha Ho Jaye" lives up to its title.

Sweet and tender, Samar Khan's film is definitely not a pretender. It deals with life and relationships and their ensuing vagaries with a gentle smile and an occasional smirk.

Positivism permeates from the plot unhampered.

The string of breached man-woman relationships that surface during a flight delay on a surprisingly un-busy airport is dealt with in episodic overtures.

Not all the sequences hold you. Many in fact, leave you wondering why the lenses froze on characters, who could've solved their problems while we weren't looking.

Kanwaljeet's bumbling "Hail fellow, well met" army man's character is excessively pitched into the over-populated plot. And Sandhya Mridul's emotionally overwrought airhostess' act becomes tedious, especially when we want to just see what the other characters are up to.

But there are so many warm, funny and revealing characters, and situations, that you actually begin look at the airport's multi-storeyed characterizations as an extended joint family.

Throughout the film you feel the presence of a guardian angel - not necessarily Shah Rukh Khan who makes a delayed rabble-rousing somewhat gimmicky appearance.

And parts of the film capturing the quirky contours of a man-woman relationship are savagely funny.

The young lovers facing the first crisis in their relationship: how to win over her father. "Get her pregnant," the boy's best friend advises.

Elsewhere, Arshad Warsi, delightfully drunken and droll, eyes the burqa-clad Muslim wife Gulab (Mahima Chowdhary) who miraculously changes into the tightest and skimpiest skirt, presumably borrowed from Britney Spears...

There are men, and there are boys. Middle-aged companionship rubs shoulders with pubescent fantasies in this designer-drama - not quite as compelling and funny as its model Hollywood flick "Love Actually", but romantic and melodic enough to qualify as a romantic musical.

You wish Samar Khan hadn't got self-indulgent, especially in the second half.

Big mistake. Still, if we cut through the narrative's phoney marital jargon, we get a film that's altogether blithe bubby and charming.

The characters flash their smiles and hide their tears with aplomb that echoes Shakespeare's all-the-world's-a-stage adage.

But there are no signs of working class activities on the airport, except for a baggage collector who's lost his rooster.

Himesh Reshammiya's songs add their bit to the toothpick-slim drama.

The performances are smooth, even and mildly engaging, with Arshad Warsi, Mahima Choudhary and Sachin Khedeker getting a hang of their roles better than the others.

And though the going gets progressively cumbersome, you cannot take away from the film's inherent charm.

"Kuch Meetha..." is like a cake whose icing is so delectable that you don't notice there's no cake