Starring: Shabana Azmi, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Goldy Notay
Directed by Gurinder Chaddha
Rating: *
Films across the world, be it Babette’s Feast or Eat Drink Man Woman, have used food wonderfully as a metaphor to communicate their themes. However, Gurinder Chaddha’s It’s A Wonderful Afterlife makes a hash of cuisine. Both the film and the food imagery are one big mess. Chaddha promised Afterlife would be in the mould of David Lean’s Blithe Spirit, a tale of funny ghosts, a combination of horror and comedy. But it’s anything but funny. There are hardly a couple of lines that bring the smile on. Shabana plays an NRI mom trying to get her overweight daughter (who gets her eyebrows threaded but not the upperlip, wonder why) married. Providing her a helping hand is a motley bunch of ghosts. Meanwhile, a serial killer is on the loose, killing people with food. With an enviable CV behind her, it’s difficult to fathom why Shabana should have opted for such a tepid role? The film gets a one-star rating for its male lead: Sendhil is no great actor but a guy worth gaping at.
