Khal-Naaikaa

Saawan Kumar Tak's 'Khal Naaikaa' rips off Curtis Hanson's psycho-nanny thriller 'The Hand That Rocks The Cradle'. There's something about actresses playing evil women on screen which is why I decided to see this. Considering that it's a Bollywood film it expectedly looks quite bad (shoddy camera-work, poor sound design, terrible costumes (especially of the male cast), awful colour correction). In addition the songs are terrible. The few things that I liked about it are: It attempts to raise awareness about sexual assault victims who shouldn't keep mom about what happened to them, fearing for their reputation and honour but they should expose their perpetrators. The other thing I liked was how the guilt and grief is depicted in the husband and wife after the loss of a close friend (this was absent in its Hollywood counterpart). Jaya Prada does quite a fine job here as the modern and gullible homemaker/occasional singer. Varsha Ushgaonkar performs adequately but even though her character is supposed to be a chain smoker, each time she lights a cigarette it looks fake and campy. Jeetendra is quite annoying. Anu Agarwal is brilliant as the conniving vindictive nanny. Her performance isn't as subtle as that of Rebecca de Mornay's but she approaches her character slightly differently and that's where she succeeds. Overall, it's pretty much a scene by scene copy of its Hollywood counterpart with the exception of the Bollywood additives (and the friend character playing a journalist).