Hindi Cinema Blog: TUM MILO TO SAHI A lukewarm meeting of souls

'Tum Milo Toh Sahi' is a film I personally placed high expectations on, mainly due to the promise of watching its veteran actors and to its central theme: generation and life differences in an ever evolving India at the height of modernization.

The film concentrates on the story of 3 Mumbaikar couples whose lives come into contact due to the greedy purchase of a traditional and cozy coffeehouse by a powerful multinational.

1^st couple: Subramanium (Nana Patekar) is a simple man with a grouchy edge who gets dismissed from his job in a multinational company, after 30 years of service. He and Delshad Nanji (Dimple Kapadia) meet at a supermarket over a broken bottle that both refuse to pay. They subsequently have several comic occasions to fight before they become fond of each other. Delshad owns a popular café in Mumbai, the Lucky Café, and instills her love to it with energetic charm.

2^nd couple: Amit & Anitha (Suniel Shetty and Vidya Malvade) are a middle-aged couple in crisis and have one child. Amit is the stereotype businessman who "lives to work" and Anitha consistently pleas him to "work to live" instead, so that he can have enough time to dedicate to his family. Amit's ambition drives him to help the multinational that hires him to acquire Delshad Nanji's (refer to 1^st couple above) coffeehouse against her will.

3^rd couple: Vikram (Rehan Khan) is a sweet small town young man who has just arrived in Mumbai. He falls inevitably in love with Shalini (Anjana Sukhani), an independent girl who works for the film industry. Both Vikram and Shalini are among the regular customers of Delshad's Lucky Café and together with other students and Delshad's friends, will protest against Amit's multinational, taking up the mission of avoiding their favorite café from being repurchased and losing its soul.

Despite the film's promising subject, I confess I agree with most critics and a majority of the audience in saying that the film has a very strong soap-opera feel to it except for Nana Patekar's absolutely brilliant and show-stealing performance. While Dimple Kapadia also conveys well her character's strong will and a candid Rehan Khan looks promising, the rest of the cast unfortunately fails to carry a weak script and dialogues. The soundtrack and background score unfortunately do not succeed in lifting up the film either, leaving spectators feeling as if they had watched a bad musical adaptation of a good and honest film.

While director Kabir Sadanand does succeed in directing comic anecdotes, his direction of drama requires seasoned or very talented actors to give scenes the necessary credibility and depth. Working on better script dialogues and coherent musical interludes might allow him to pull off a better film next time.

If you are interested in an acting master class, I suggest you purchase the 'Tum Milo Toh Sahi' DVD upon its release in order to watch Nana Patekar's high class performance… You might sadly want to fast forward a couple of times during the film otherwise.