Cast: Kriti Sanon, Pankaj Tripathi, Evelyn Edwards, Sai Tamhankar, Aidan Whytock, Supriya Pathak, Manoj Pahwa
Director: Laxman Utekar
Stars: ***1/2/5
Kriti Sanon starrer Mimi has recently been released on Netflix India. The movie had leaked online and hence the makers were forced to release it before the scheduled date. The plot of the movie revolves around Mimi Mansingh Rathore (Sanon). She is a small-town girl, who performs as a stage dancer. Despite hailing from Bikaner, Mimi harbours the dream of making big in Bollywood. Her fantasy is to star opposite Ranveer Singh and give Kareena Kapoor Khan, Deepika Padukone and Katrina Kaif's a run for their money. She has posters of all four stuck to the wall of her bedroom.
The biggest obstacle in her path is the expenses. She is very well that the ticket to Tinseltown is expensive. So after a little reluctance, she agrees to be a surrogate mother to an American couple. However, the American couple abandons their unborn child and Mimi as soon as they get the hint that the kid might have down syndrome, leaving Mimi to raise it on her own.
Mimi is an official remake of the National-award winning Marathi movie ‘Mala Aai Vhhaychy!’ Laxman Utekar has directed both Marathi and the Hindi versions of the movie,
The best part about the movie is the performance. This is Kriti Sanon's best performance to date. While she could have got a better hold of that Rajthani ascent but she does manage to get the right nuances at certain key elements. My personal favourite scene is when Mimi holds her baby for the first time and the camera lingers on her face to show just a single tear trickling down her cheek. It is at that moment that she realises that Bollywood is now a chapter in the past and her life will never be the same.
Pankaj Tripathi as usual leaves a lasting impression. Supriya Pathak and Manoj Pahwa too are commendable in their roles. The movie has a good pace and drags only towards the climax. It seems like the director had saved all the melodrama for that last bit.
The biggest drawback for me in this movie is that I found it to be very incentive towards people with down syndrome. In India, the awareness in regards to down syndrome to date is limited and their acceptance is still limited. The idea that even a foreign couple would want to abandon an unborn child just because s/he has down syndrome may end up aggravating this issue even further and thus these children and subsequent adults may find it harder to secure a space for themselves.
In an ideal world, I would have loved if the kid born to Mimi was indeed a down syndrome and they would have all been equally happy to welcome it into their world. And the rest of the things remaining the same as shown in the movie.
The movie makes a strong point for the orphan children in the end but I just hope they would have kept the same approach for other aspects in the movie.
In nutshell, Mimi is a well-intentioned, feel-good movie but I do wish the makers had kept a few other aspects in mind.
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