Namaste Wahala
Cast: Ruslaan Mumtaz, Ini Dima-Okojie, Richard Mofe-Damijo, Joke Silva, Sujata Sehgal, Ibrahim Suleiman, Hamisha Daryani Ahuja
Direction: Hamisha Daryani Ahuja
We aren’t in a Bollywood film, Indian boy tells Nigerian woman. For their sake you want they had been, their love story could be way more thrilling.
Namaste Wahala harks again to the way in which Bollywood would not make love tales anymore. You have a boy and a lady in love. You have a fuming mother or father on both aspect who doesn’t approve of the match. Throw in some ‘thanda naach-gaana’, drained rom-com, zero chemistry plus random melodrama, and what you get is 106 minutes of poorly cooked masala potboiler that is too amateurish to regale.
For the report, the movie is an Indo-Nigerian try. So, the Bollywood-Nollywood crossover mush is of course pitched as a USP. It all leads to a large number.
Writer-director Hamisha Daryani Ahuja casts Bollywood actor Ruslaan Mumtaz as Raj, an funding banker in Lagos, Nigeria. He bumps into social employee Didi (Nollywood actress Ini Dima-Okojie) on the seashore throughout an early morning jog, and it’s love at first sight for each.
One love music later, it’s time for Didi to introduce Raj to her mother and father. Of course, Didi’s father (Richard Mofe-Damijo) has a pleasant Nigerian boy (Ibrahim Suleiman) tucked away for her in his workplace. He is about to unleash the classic Amrish Puri model of rage as Raj goes for the nice outdated ‘paye lagoo’ drill.
Didi has related destiny in retailer when Raj’s very Punjabi mamma (Sujata Segal) comes calling. She is a fullblown Kirron Kher parody, grumbling over how skinny Raj has develop into residing alone, asserting that she’ll feed him “good butter rooster” so he’ll develop into “good and fats” once more. Her retort, as Didi tries to fall comically at her ft on their first assembly, is meant so as to add to the comedy — she asks Raj if Didi can put together chhole bhature.
At instances, a nasty components movie turns into inadvertently humorous for the very cliches it tries to hawk. The drawback with Namaste Wahala is even cliche-ridden unhealthy components movies within the Bollywood rom-com style went previous expiry date fairly a while in the past.
For the sake of authenticity, writer-director Ahuja maintains a mixture of English, Hindi and native Nigerian lingo. You sense a scarcity of coherence within the general temper the dialogues attempt to set up, simply because the screen-writing (Diche Enuwa and Temitope Bolade-Akinbode) struggles to craft partaking storytelling. This, in flip, impacts the performances because the forged strives to recover from poorly-penned roles.
Namaste Wahala broadly interprets to ‘Hello bother’. For the sake of an attention-grabbing watch, we want we may spot a speck of bother someplace on this story.
Rating: 2/5
