I can’t believe I watched the film at midnight. How lucky I am to have slept peacefully even after this traumatizing experience. I mean, Maja Ma is meaningless. It’s zabardasti ka drama. This gay lesbian subjects have started to annoy me now. No, not because I hate them but because I haven’t come across an Indian filmmaker or writer yet who could do justice to these individuals.
By simply giving the story a lesbian or gay twist, writers think that they are coming up with something extraordinary, something so great that it would change the world with one film of theirs. Sorry to break it to you, dear writers, your writing is not that impactful. You haven’t lived their lives and will never be able to tell the world what it is to be gay, lesbian, or transgender. You will never be able to explain their mental state or the humiliation they face in their day-to-day lives.
Stop glamorising LGBTQ community. They cannot be used for entertainment purposes. If you can’t do justice to their stories, stop telling their stories. They are capable enough to fight for themselves. I hope someday, in India, someone from the community will write their own story and put it in front of us and actually change everyone’s hearts along with their perspective.
WHAT IS THIS FILM ALL ABOUT? MAJA MA STORY…
Maja Ma is a middle-aged, “perfect” woman’s story who turns out to be a lesbian. When young, she was in love with her best friend. They decide to elope but then Pallavi (played by Madhuri Dixit) backs out and settles down with Manohar Patel (played by Gajraj Rao) only to have a normal, ‘acceptable’ life. They have two kids, a daughter and a son. While daughter, Tara Patel is fighting for the rights of LGBTQA+ community and is also doing her PhD in the same subject; the son, Tejas Patel is busy impressing his girlfriend’s parents, Bob and Pam Hansraj.
In the film, there is this little girl who is always recording videos on the phone. One such video is of Pallavi Patel who while in a conversation with her daughter, furiously confesses that she is a lesbian and asks her if this is her truth, will she (Tara) who fights for the community’s rights, accept her? This video, along with the short clippings of other people, is played at a function. This small clipping is then turned into a Yashraj Mukhate style song that goes viral turning everyone’s lives upside down.
Then enters Kanchan (Simone Singh), Tara’s mother-in-law, who eventually turns out to be Pallavi’s then love interest. As Tara and Pallavi are discussing their long-lost love, Tejas overhears the conversation and decides to take his mother to a baba to heal her. On the other side, there is her daughter who takes Pallavi to a counsellor who helps individuals accept their sexuality. All of it without discussing it with the lady in question.
What happens next? Pallavi finally accepts that she loved another woman and has not been happy having sexual relationship with her husband but she has never slept with another woman. After her confession, she tells her family that she will soon be leaving all of them and settling down in the village.
On hearing that, the family suddenly has a change of heart and they accept her the way she is. Esha’s (Tejas’s girlfriend) family who has been creating a ruckus over Pallavi’s sexuality till now is also fine with it only because Pam has a silly, childish, heated conversation with Kanchan over her relationship with her husband. Pam then realises that she has been tolerating her husband all these years and his nonsense should stop. And that is how the 2 hours 15 minutes nonsense comes to an end, abruptly.
WHAT’S ANNOYING IN MAJA MA?
Everything! The story, its presentation, direction, performances, dialogues – everything is annoying as it’s childish and foolish. Fake accents are the most annoying thing in this film – from Gujarati to American accent – everything was so forced and made up. And it’s 2022, please stop using fake backgrounds and if you are so obsessed with it, at least make sure that it looks real. Not even the house was real. For God’s sake, what was the issue with having a real-looking house? When you use backgrounds that do not merge with your scene, everything looks like it’s overlapping. Ever changed the background during a Teams meeting? That is how the scene where Pam Hansraj, Kanchan, and Pallavi have a heated discussion looked like – unreal and fake. That scene was already flawed. On top of that, the background was not real. What makes you think that such a movie will be liked by the audience? Or was it made only to show losses?
Another thing that’s super annoying is picking good OTT actors and treating them like extra in big budget movies. Ritwik Bowmik is an excellent actor but what he does in Maja Ma is not him. Sometimes, big projects kill good actors and small projects help them become legends. Actors who are known for their good performances should always pick projects very carefully or else, the career won’t take much time to end.
That’s why they are cast opposite stars, so that when we pay for actors, we buy the stars we would not spend a penny on.
My take: Maja Ma is a waste of time. If you want to watch some cheap comedy in the name of a cause, go ahead, watch Maja Ma.
Streaming On: Amazon Prime Video
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