‘Helicopter Eela’ Gets Hijacked by Melodrama

‘Helicopter Eela’ could have been so much more had melodrama not hijacked the narrative.

(Photo: Film poster)

A helicopter parent is one who hovers around their child all the time and try and control every aspect of his/her life.

It’s something that Eela Raiturkar (Kajol) is clearly guilty of.

This fact is established pretty early on in Pradeep Sarkar’s latest directorial venture Helicopter Eela. Eela checks on her son Vivan (Riddhi Sen) every few minutes, micro-managing his life even after he reaches college.

It’s an interesting concept but the execution results in a single tone, laboured narrative about this all-consuming maa-beta rishta.

The non-linear structure takes us first to the ’90s where Eela is an ambitious part-time model wanting to make it big as a singer.

Her boyfriend Arun (Tota Roy Chowdhury) writes jingles and just when things begin to look up for the two, circumstances conspire and her career takes an emergency landing.

What should ideally have inspired nostalgia with many hit songs and jingles from the era coming our way, instead ends up as a strange exercise of witnessing a costume drama.

Ila Arun, Anu Malik, a strikingly younger version of Mahesh Bhatt, and Baba Sehgal make cameo appearances and we simply wait for things to finally take off.

They do at least on the personal front when Eela and Arun get married and Vivan is born. Problems ensue soon after and Eela takes full responsibility for bringing up Vivan.

The screenplay by Mitesh Shah and Anand Gandhi, on whose Gujarati play the story is based on, hammer in the same point again and again – obsessive mother and a boy fighting for his space.

Eela eavesdrops in on Vivan’s conversations with his friends and eventually joins his college on the pretext of completing her education.

The film keeps moving in circles which makes it a frustrating watch.

Kajol flabbergastingly pitches herself in unbearably shrill territory.

She is loud, melodramatic and even has a Jaya Bachchan syndrome from K3G where she intuitively knows when her son his going to descend at the door!

Why would an actress of Kajol’s caliber be so single-tone in her performance one wonders.

The young Riddhi Sen, who is already a national award winner, is impressively measured and nuanced as Vivan who understands why his mother fusses over him but can’t help but get irritated with the behaviour.

The ensemble cast also has Neha Dhupia, Zakir Hussain and Tota Roy Chowdhury who have precious little to do. The only time the screen brightens up is when Eela’s mother-in-law played by Kamini Khanna comes in rattling off his delightful punjabi!

Helicopter Eela could have been so much more had melodrama not hijacked the narrative.