Morning Walk

'Morning Walk' suffers from imbalanced, shoddy and very poor writing. It is given th same treatment as Indian soap operas. I don't understand the significance of the title as it has little relevance. At some point, songs appear randomly one after the other. They are mediocre in quallity (at best) and poorly visualized. The cringeworthy background score is extremely intrusive. The director lacks focus and he tries to juggle in too many things without going anywhere. With actors like Rajit Kapoor, Anupam Kher, Divya Dutta and Sharmila Tagore, I expected much more, at least decent performances but only Rajit Kapoor does a competent job while the others are passable at best. Moreover, Anupam Kher did not convince as a 70-year old at all. What could have been an engaging family drama ends up being a half-baked soap opera episode.

The concept I am sure looked good on paper but the execution comprising of twists and turns in the plot was ideally suited for the television audience. There are so many jagged edges which ruins the the user experience in a major way. On that same note, perhaps the story is late by at least a decade.

Performances::

§ Anupam Kher:: As usual he is very dependable and reliable. However the way his character owns up parenthood was awful.

§ Sharmila Tagore: Though she gives her best shot, however at a certain point she got non-chalant. And retaining Anupam & Sharmila in B&W flashback is poor thinking.

§ Rajat Kapoor: I used to like from the Byomkesh Bakshi days and even today its nice to see that he maintains his personality quite well. His character seems over-inspired by Baghban. The Father-son relation was a bit OTT and too candy-floss. And why does his character breaks into singing in Spanish?

§ Divya Dutta: It must have been easy for Divya for her the daughter-in- law character is straight from Baghban. And her penultimate show-down scene is perhaps the worst in the decade.

§ Nargis: Her performance was totally artificial. Needs a fair bit of acting lessons. Her choice of costumes deserves a mention.

§ Shayan Munshi: Again an ill-conceived character. Failed to understand why the mother & daughter were simply in awe of this unemployed, mis- managed, lack of punctuality & good-for-nothing youth. And his ultra-cool look and choice of clothes need a reality check.

§ Avika Gor: Looks very cute but needs to work on making the delivery come across naturally.

§ The actress who played Shilpa (Shetty!) was a sign of heights of unemployment.

On the whole, its the writing which is the main culprit. Except for one song, the rest have crappy lyrics.

Bottomline:: Its Walk the boring Talk!