Scientist-turned-actor Sameer Mani Dixit will benefit more than anyone else from the recent release ‘Na Yeta Na Uta’. The biomedical researcher, who already wears numerous hats ranging from a TV host to that of a ‘weatherman for Twitterati’, he adds one more. He is as a lead actor of the movie, and he is proud of it.
This farce is funny, and it’s all that the movie offers you. Besides that, the movie is unlikely to score any remarkable achievement, both artistically and commercially. It has a unique but insubstantial story, played by unpolished actors. The movie does not meet the benchmarks of a commercial movie.
Fun at every movement
The movie tries to poke fun at each and every situation of life (even this would be an understatement). At the core of plot is nothing but humour. We have two men, apparently above 40, desperate to get hitched. The whole movie narrates how these two men find one woman each to tie the knot with them.
The duo, played by Dixit and Miraz Rosh, does not spare any situation when cracking jokes. When they reach the house of their guide-turned-friend, the family is performing his death ritual by paying tributes to him and playing traditional musical instruments. But the two friends think the friend is enjoying a warm welcome at home, having ditched them halfway.
From the first minute, you notice that these two men mimic one another. The two coworkers don’t only seek partners together, but even go dating together, at the same place. As the movie progresses, you see them finding their lady counterparts also in the same bonding. Not only one time, but at least four times, they find women doing similar things like them: when they date two sisters in London, when they meet two others at a Kathmandu club when they go to a riverbank for a night camp, and finally when they find Reecha Sharma and Chhulthim Gurung.
A few minutes before the end, the two heroes find a taxi driver clad in wedding attire and convince him to drive them to Kathmandu. Later, they convince the flight attendants of an international flight to dress them as pilots so that they can board the aircraft and find their girlfriends going abroad. Each and every moment of the movie makes you laugh.
The senseless story
Okay, you can consider seeing the two men’s struggle to find the love of their life funny, but you fail to find any sympathy for them because the story is senseless. You don’t know why they failed to get hitched on time. The movie does not strive to answer because it just offers you the idea that marrying in the 40s is fun.
Finding two women every time, equally hilarious like the men, to respond to their desire for romance is equally senseless. Further, the audience does not understand how the two friends can stay at their friend’s house, immediately after his death, for several months without any specific purpose, and finally, end up ‘seducing’ the deceased man’s sister and her best friend.
The dramatic story speeds up in the last 30 minutes. It is ludicrous to see the two characters getting a call from a London restaurateur agreeing to ‘give’ his daughters to the men along with the restaurant as dowry. It is beyond comprehension to see the duo get beaten up by villagers and expelled from the village on the charge of killing their friend. If that’s not enough, they come back to the village to ‘take’ their girlfriends and ward off the ‘villains’ within 15 minutes.
Poor acting and presentation
The movie’s cast includes exactly two dozen people as mentioned below the movie’s trailer on YouTube, but no one is impressive. Dixit and Rosh cannot raise themselves above the status of television comedians. Experienced Sharma and Gurung also do not meet the expectation.
Rabindra Jha, Jaya Nanda Lama, Buddhi Tamang, Rajaram Paudel and Loonibha Tuladhar are just laughing stocks.
Given the poor story, it can be argued that the movie does not need any seriousness in acting. The only job the cast has been given to them is making the audience laugh and they have done it. Therefore, the major fault lies in the story and presentational flaws are just byproducts.
The movie has three songs: the first is a pop item from a nightclub, the second one is romantic melody and the third is a folk-flavoured dance number. It seems the movie team wants to appeal to different audience groups with the songs.
Verdict
This project seems to be a collective experiment for a jumbo team of seven producers, two executive producers, two directors and 24 actors. If their intention was to test if such movies get any place in the commercial movie market, they are already successful. But, if these people were really serious about business, they need to improve everything, the storytelling in particular. After all, a comic movie is not only a compilation of jokes that make people laugh; it is an art form that demands artistic treatment of human emotions.
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Na Yeta Na Uta
Runtime: 120 minutes
Genre: Farce/Comedy
Screenwriter: Miraz Rosh
Directors: Miraz Rosh and Bisharad Basnet
Cast: Sameer Mani Dixit, Reecha Sharma, Miraz Rosh, Chhulthim Gurung, Buddhi Tamang, Rabindra Jha, Namrata Sapkota
1.5/5
