Not so funny

Unlike her earlier lively efforts, Gurinder Chadha’s It’s a Wonderful Afterlife
fails to recreate her magic

AFTER an exciting body of films on the Indian diaspora abroad, Gurinder Chadha seems to have lost it. The obsession of an Indian mother to see her daughter married off is a subject loaded with possibilities but unlike her past lively efforts, she goes about it quite labouredly. The ghosts tend to get on one’s nerves and the credibility of the story takes a nosedive well before the halfway mark.

The screenplay by Paul Mayeda Berges and Chadha (husband and wife in real life) is flat and whatever humour that arises out of this spoof is essentially peripheral, the characters are cardboard thin and credibility is the biggest casualty. May be the Punjabi dance and music is the only bonus apart from the Stayin Alive rendition by the Bee Gees as the end.

It is the story of a Punjabi widow Mrs Sethi (Shabana Azmi) who lives in London with her talented but slightly overweight daughter Roopi (Goldy Notay) and music freak son Jazz (Roy Panthaki). After a few aborted efforts for which the parties concerned met their end in what has come to be known as the Curry Murders. It is Mrs Sethi’s culinary skills that do the trick but the visuals are too gory and could have been done off-screen.

So the ghosts (they could have been used more judiciously) are hell bent on getting even with Mrs Sethi. But there’s a catch. It’s something about their souls being freed and they decide to co-operate with their murderer. Meanwhile Roopi’s friend Gitali alias Linda (Sally Hawkins) finds the presence of spirits around Mrs Sethi. Roopi then finds a likely match in Murthy (Sendhil Ramamurthy) who coincidentally is assigned to the Curry Murders case and has been asked to shadow Roopi. The story chugs along with rare touches of wit Chadha has now come to be associated with.

The title of the film is a tribute to Frank Capra’s film but the narrative is anything but wonderful. The in-your-face ghosts tend to pal except for their rare asides and one is left numb with probably what is meant to be funny. Shabana Azmi, who has put on a few pounds for the role, does an excellent job and maintains her credibility as the others around her flounder. Newcomer Goldy Notay is too patchy and never really gets into the spirit of things and Sendhil Ramamurthy is purely academic. There’s little by way of acting talent. One can put up with poor acting if the narrative is strong enough. But that too is a big no-no in this colourless Gurinder Chadha offering.

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