Love You To Death
At: PVR and other cinemas
Directed by Rafeeq Ellias
Cast: Yuki Ellias, Chandan Roy Sanyal, Suhasini Mulay, Kallol Banerjee, Sheeba Chaddha and others
Rating: * *
Love You To Death tries hard to be a dark comedy, but unfortunately, it concentrates more on character ‘types’ than a proper script. The idea of a family wanting to murder their daughter-in-law for her money is also a bit distasteful in a country where dowry killings are rampant and go mostly unpunished.
Sonia (Yuki Ellias) is a ditzy woman, married to the money-grubbing Atul (Chandan Roy Sanyal), whose parents Sundari (Suhasini Mulay), and Ravi (Kallol Banerjee) come part of the package. How the very mismatched couple got together and how this in-laws squatting situation came about is not quite clear. Sonia lavishes more attention on her dog and relies completely on her tarot reader (Sheeba Chaddha) for emotional support.
When she meets ‘green’ researcher John (Nicholas Brown), who spouts save-the-environment clichés, she is enchanted. She promptly wants to gift him land and money coveted by Atul for some dubious project with a Russian pro-war nutcase. The mother first wants Atul to ground Sonia with a child, and when that can’t happen due to “missile failure” (according to the weird sexologist played by Sorab Ardeshir, who gets to sing a terrible song too!), she goads him to murder his wife.
The man chosen for the job is a theatre director (Chetan Shashital), who functions out of Prithvi Theatre, which is as sacrilegious as it sounds.
The silly socialite is not even an interesting character to base a film on. There are a few stray funny moments, in this ‘Hinglish’ film, but then everybody overacts, many of them have odd accents and all except the kid who plays the all-purpose domestic help, have their comic timing off. Director Rafiq Ellias has got some recognisable faces from Mumbai’s social scene, and there must be some private jokes in there, but for the lay viewer, the film is just a collection of bizarre and not very likeable characters.