“Flat but OK”.
- This is how a TV channel describes the graph of the sensex at one point of time in the movie. “Flat and not OK” is what would describe the entire movie at any given point. Saas Bahu aur Sensex is about a few women living together in an apartment complex. In an industry where women are mere props in most movies, it is heartening to see someone take the courage to make a movie about everyday housewives. But, the plot is so lifeless that there is hardly any excitement or motivation to get involved with the characters.

No doubt it was refreshing to see Kirron Kher as a non-Punjabi, non-loud personality. Also, Tanushree Dutta and Mausameh made a decent show of their introverted and extroverted characters respectively. I was surprised to know that the lady playing the Punjabi from Delhi was actually Sharon Prabhakar! She looked different and annoyed, as, I guess, the character was meant to do. Farouque Shaikh was adorable in his character blushing and getting frustrated alternately. Ankur Khanna managed to make you care for his character but the writing, especially for the climax of his particular character, was unforgivably lame.

So was the climax of the movie. The writing, in general, was just too incoherent to make any sense of the characters’ motivations. Or, the motivations are so plain that the person seems unbelievable. A representative of each community/geographical region is picked and laced with stereotypes. Details have no place whatsoever. Things happen and you are expected to accept. The guy who runs the training for accent neutralization in a call center easily bags jobs for his friends. Passage of time is really difficult to follow too. You feel like events are happening on consecutive days, but that doesn’t fit in with the way they are laid out. Nope! It doesn’t have a great sense of humor either.

It might be about woman power but you are turned off by the flimsy writing itself. Let us just hope that in some way it is a harbinger of good times ahead. The Sensex is shown to touch 30,000. Isn’t that the hope we need given its behavior in recent times?