Vaah! Life Ho Toh Aisi!

Starring: Sanjay Dutt, Shahid Kapur, Amrita Rao and Arshad Warsi

Director: Mahesh Manjrekar

Rating: 1/5 (Poor)

Despite creating a hullabaloo of being a film specially meant for children, Mahesh Manjrekar's Vaah! Life Ho Toh Aisi!, opened with a rather soggy start on Friday.

The problem is, his Vaah! Life Ho Toh Aisi! is a script that's so full of cliches that there's no real honesty visible from start to finish.

Almost every character in the film is a cardboard caricature, a stereotype that one has already seen in a number of films earlier.

The hip grandma, the evil uncle, the good-as-gold girl next door, even the turncoat best friend, are characters that have been all played to death.

Manjrekar casts Shahid Kapur as the uncle of a dozen-odd kids who look upto him for inspiration, amusement and encouragement.

But when Shahid is killed in an accident, the family not only finds themselves burdened with debts they cannot pay, but also shattered over the loss of the only person who brought real joy into their lives.

Thanks to a little kindness on part of Death God Yamraj, Shahid is allowed a little extra time to fix his family's problems on Earth.

Manjrekar plagarises freely and shamelessly from both Mr India and Ghost, but he's still unable to duplicate the spirit of either film.

The movie treats death in a rather flippant manner and projects Yamraaj as the coolest character, one who enjoys drinking alcohol and looking up girl's skirts.

The director does zero justice to Shahid's abundant talent by saddling him with a role that is half-baked. As a result, Shahid overacts throughout and is no pleasure to watch.

His only moments of brilliance in this film are when he's on his toes and moving to the music.

Leading lady Amrita Rao serves virtually no purpose in the film apart from playing dance partner to Shahid.

Sanjay Dutt plays cucumber cool Yamraj, who really gets on your nerves with an acting style that can be most politely described as sleepwalking through his scenes. The actor is wasted, and underutilised completely.

It's a pity that the director who gave us such gems as Vaastav, Astitva and more recently Viruddh, seems to have lost his touch completely.

Think of any good children's film — Chota Chetan, Mr India, even Koi Mil Gaya — and the one thing common is that they're all engaging stories that don't treat kids as idiots.

But Manjrekar's Vaah! Life Ho Toh Aisi! is nothing close to being interesting and finally turns out to be a predictable story of revenge.

How dare he take kids for granted and assume they're not smart enough to smell the stink from this one?