Aisha - Preview

NOT A REVIEW - Just wondering if Abhay Deol can pull off a regular, commercial-film type role alongside Sonam Kapoor who is clearly THE protagonist Aisha

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21-year old entrepreneurs - I have a few friends who meet the description - One the founder of an online life-style activism magazine and a restaurant ; another who runs a social media company. And it still makes me proud to read that the latest producer in the industry was 21 when she started working Aisha. I don't know her, nor am I 'connected to her' in the farthest meaning of the phrase. There's just something extremely healthy about kids getting hands-on experience and trying their skills out in real life.

Apparently, the entire Aisha team is very young. Director, Rajshree Ojha is not yet 30 either. You do expect many new ideas; hope for fresh take on whatever issue they pick; rejuvenation of old themes using a novel narrative style. And then the trailer leaves you with mix feelings. Granted it looks like a romantic story with a difference, yet something made me wary. Or maybe it's just the anxiety of having decent hopes set up by the promos, mercilessly crushed in these past few weeks.

Abhay Deol's presence in this trailer is extremely comforting. Even though, it's clear that the film is all about Aisha. Oh yeah, isn't that fresh? I know a lot of Aisha's character from these two minutes - certainly more than I sometimes could say about the female lead in an entire Hindi film. Which says a lot, because that means there is a lot to know about Aisha, right?

As evil as it sounds, another reassuring factor is that Rajshree struggled to find producers. Because, that means her script is trying to break the norm -

Enough of Hollywood films have been copied to make Bollywood hits. I want to take a Bollywood film and make a film in Hollywood

...

Satyajit Ray is my favourite director and one day I would like to adapt a book of his and make a film on it.

Meanwhile Aisha is based on Jane Austen 's 'Emma'. That in itself is breaking the norm, no? Giving credit and all. Given this background I'm intrigued by the Hannah Montana meets Barbie meets young socialite feel I get from the promo and marketing tactics .

I'm sure most films go through an ordeal to get the 'look' of the protagonists right. But Aisha 's marketing goes out of its way to talk about the clothes . They also emphasize wherever they can that the character is a fashion statement herself.

The effort that has gone into the clothes may remind the audiences of glamorous-looking movies like Devil Wears Prada, Priceless and Sex and the City.

There is more stuff here that makes you look forward to a happy-and-yet-good film compared to smiling-faces-in-climax-which-want-to-make-you-cry. If the word in the blog world and film magazines is right, the music has already done the good deed. Milliblog is impressed with every track in the album. Apun ka choice has a question for music director, Amit Trivedi , "Oh boy! Where were you?" Blogger, Sahil Bhalla calls it 'Genius'. The other descriptive phrases used are youthful and entertaining and
a complete package.

This article was first published at meetu's Times of India Blog.