Review: Mad, Sad & Bad
- Article 1 of 2
- Filmstar, August 2009
A family that’s mad, sad and bad tries to escape from its lot in life – by writing an opera about cheese sellers. It’s never going to work, is it?
It’s ironic that one of the characters in ‘Mad, Sad & Bad’ is a psychiatrist who understands everyone’s problems except his own, because that’s precisely the issue the film’s writer/director – and trained psychiatrist – Avie Luthra seems to have with the script. A slightly aimless story about a family of two brothers, a sister and their mother, each mad, bad and sad in their own ways, it feels more like a set of case studies than a genuine narrative.
Meera Syal plays Rashmi, an on-the-shelf thirtysomething who’s stuck at home with her alcoholic mother, Leena (Leena Dhingra); her brother Hardeep (Zubin Varla) is a sex-addicted psychiatrist who uses his job to seduce women, usually his patients; while Atul (Nitin Ganatra) is a sitcom-writer who hates everything he writes, is in love with his best friend’s wife (Ayesha Dharker) and is neglecting his depressive artist/croupier girlfriend Julia (Andrea Riseborough). It’s a motley collection of characters who inhabit their own spaces, trying their level best to avoid having to deal with their own problems or anyone else.
Now, there’s nothing really wrong with any of these stories. The performances are all first-rate, there’s genuine, everyday tragedy to the drama, and the characters are all involving. But nothing really gels and there doesn’t seem to be any real reason for these characters’ stories to have been told, no message to be given to the audience and no real insight into the characters. Mostly, they feel like people desperately in need of assertiveness training classes, rather than anything else.
Equally, the blend of comedy and drama makes it hard for the story to provide a message. Rashmi seems to be stuck in an Indian version of ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’; Atul dreams of making an opera about an 18th century cheese-seller; while Julia, the most real of all the characters, ends up mailing a finger to Hardeep.
Luthra, a TV director by training, has essentially shot a TV drama. Its tight close-ups and handheld work make you think ‘BBC2’ rather than big screen, and as a bit of 9pm BBC2 eccentricity, a kind of low-budget, less charming, British version of The Royal Tenenbaums, this might have worked. But as a movie, it lacks purpose or coherence.