Prominently publicized as a comic satire with an interesting cast featuring Om Puri, Annu Kapoor and Sanjay Mishra leading the show, the biggest drawback of MISS TANAKPUR HAAZIR HO is that whatever one expects to see or has seen in the promos, it all starts post intermission in the film quite surprisingly. In other words, the basic satire attempted in the script pointing towards the backward mindset, corrupt system, police, law, courts and village panchayats actually begins in its second half when the viewer is already feeling hugely misled and disappointed watching its initial hour.
Reportedly based on ‘real life events’, the film is set in Tanakpur, a fictional village of rural India (Haryana), where an innocent young boy is falsely charged of raping a buffalo, to hide his ongoing affair with the village pradhan’s young wife. But since it’s complete first half gets horribly wasted in all uninteresting sequences, long conversational scenes and not so impressive comedy, the film simply ruins all its chances to make an impact before it even commences talking about its main publicized theme of the strange inhuman rape-case.
Mentioning its few merits, though the intentions are all fine and the director does manage to capture the rustic look and feel of the subject along with his noticeable DOP in a couple of effective sequences (like the one when the boy’s father is in a well). Yet it’s the script and an all forced comedy that mostly falls flat hampering its overall impact, despite the presence of some engaging moments towards the end, closing on an introspective note. Moreover the tragedy of the boy’s family that happens to be the most hard hitting aspect of the film, sadly gets no major emphasis as it should, probably to avoid any heavy and over-dramatic emotional scenes as it seems. Plus the over-length of the film stressing unnecessarily at various points doesn’t let you feel for its characters right from the beginning. As a result MTHH neither becomes a powerful satire nor an enjoyable comedy as portrayed in its cleverly edited promos projecting it as an important eye-opener.
With a strictly routine soundtrack, the film’s background music tries to enhance the progression on screen sincerely and the performances have Annu Kapoor stealing the show as the pradhan, followed by Sanjay Mishra as the fake village ‘Godman’ fooling everyone around. Ravi Kissen is just fine in some of his key scenes and Om Puri plays the corrupt police officer with an effortless ease as always. However Hrishta Bhatt scores in her climax sequence with the buffalo, in an otherwise okay performance playing the pardhan’s unsatisfied young wife.
In all, it’s the unimpressive direction, sluggish editing and all forced humour that doesn’t let MISS TANAKPUR HAAZIR HO rise above the level of a below average attempt. Nevertheless, the film does make you think about the state of life lived in our rural India where still such hard to believe real life events become possible due to the rotten and corrupt system without a spine of its own.
Ratings : 2 / 5 (with a special mention of the scene related to the victim’s father hiding in the well)
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