Ufff Yeh Siyapaa Review: Imagine the makers of this mirthless mocktail huddled together in their bubble of hilarity, how much they must have laughed at their own jokes while making this film! Or going back even further, when someone, the genius in the bright pack, decided that the team would make a silent film.
Taraaaa! I said it. Yes, spoiler ahead: Ufff Yeh Chu… sorry, Siyapaa is a silent film. The last one who attempted a wordless film was Kamal Haasan in Pushpak. Of course, the creators of this monsterpiece are no less than Master Haasan… or so they must feel inside their demented heads.
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Sohum Shah is normally a reliable actor, capable of playing any part with conviction. Here he is way out of sorts as a potbellied lecher whose ogling gets his wife’s goat and the neighbour’s sleep. The distressed wife is played by Nushrratt Bharuccha (don’t bother to get a hang of her name’s spelling, by the time you do, the film will be out of the theatres). Ms NB has nothing more to do than stomp in and out of her husband’s home with their child, who looks perpetually sleep-deprived. NB does the wife act with as much finesse as a trapeze artiste walking a rope that dangles seriously close to the ground level.
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She also shows up as a murdered corpse in Sohum’s building, probably as a device to increase her playing time in a movie where the lead actor plays Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Kamal Haasan, all on a day when their pep pills have expired.
Although the actors don’t speak, the background score by A R Rahman (no less!) is so cacophonic we are not allowed to miss the spoken word.
Director G Ashok forgets the one golden rule of the silent era: the power of visuals made the spoken word redundant. Here, the frames look like makeshift locations for a daytime soap opera. The actors don’t allow us to miss the spoken word: they are so busy playing Dumb Charade with every twist in the plot, ensuring that we don’t miss anything. Not that there is much to miss.
Worst hit by the playful plague is Nora Fatehi as Sohum Shah’s neighbour. She is the femme fatale in urgent need for a mission beyond being the ogler-hero’s favourite eye-f..k.
Talented actors like Omkar Kapoor and Sharib Hashmi come and go at the writer’s whim. What do I say about this flipped flick that isn’t abusive? When Javed Akhtar wrote the song Kuch Na Kaho, he probably didn’t think it would come to this.