Main Aisa Hi Hoon is a bad film. However, it marks the birth of an actress called Esha Deol...
 

Main Aisa Hi Hoon (MAHH) is worth a khullamkhulla comment only for the stunning performance delivered by Esha Deol in her fifteen-minutes role. She deserves a big and warm hug from her much-celebrated parents for her work in the film. She has done proud to them. Hats off to Harry Baweja for bringing out the best of this girl. The lion's share of the credit should probably go to Esha. How is it that Baweja could not extract similar good performances from other actors?

We had seen small flashes of Esha’s brilliance in films like Yuva. She blooms in MAHH. This film will only be remembered for her rebirth as an actress. She has lived her role of a wayward teenager, and a drug addict. Nothing is missing here. Even the smallest of her gestures convey a whole lot of things. She acts normally, naturally, effortlessly, and spontaneously.
 

The girl proves beyond doubt that she is not going to play ornamental roles like Dhoom and Kaal forever. She has left the rat race behind in this film. What she has to do now is to look for roles that do justice to her talent and she will very easily become the best actor of the Deol family. She has distinguished herself apart from the new girls of tinsel town who are so eagerly and enthusiastically climbing on to the 'body show' bandwagon.

Esha must get dead serious about her career as an actress after this. One was pleasantly surprised to find no traces and shadows of her mother’s mannerisms in her personality in this film. It is a very big achievement. Abhishek Bachhan needs to learn this trick from her if he wishes to go somewhere in his lacklustre career.

The film otherwise has a badly contrived and fake story line and plot. It does not give sufficient motivations to the actors to deliver credible performances.

Ajay Devgan as Indraneel Thakur does an obvious and stereotypical caricature of a mentally challenged adult. He is rutted and is not even trying to do anything to improve, reform, or reorient. It gets tedious to watch him after a while in MAHH. He fails to win the sympathy of the audience because of this glaring flaw. Heavy doses of jaded faded cinematic sentimentality move none. This negates the very objective of selecting a subject like this for the film.

The courtroom drama is predictable, repetitive, and prolonged to the point of deadly boredom. Relationships between various characters are sketchily and synthetically explored. Sushmita Sen does what she has been doing in all her films, a schoolmarm act in Simi Garewal mould. This is becoming her trademark, trying to be a man among other men. You want an actress to play an emotionally deficient woman, get Sushmita. There is something quite false about her. She is a 'put on' actress and person. Have you watched her interviews? Her answers sound put on. Her smile, and gestures are put on. Even the brightness of her eyes is put on. And you know something, everything that is put on is sure to put people off. Is it the conditioning she had to go through during her beauty contest days that has made her permanently handicapped like this? She must do something about it.

The climax of the film is uselessly stretched and ends up as a damp squib. It carries on even after there is no steam left in the story. There is very little laughter in the film. Music is ordinary. Cinematography is good in Esha Deol’s sequences.

However, it is time for celebrations. A true actor like Esha Deol has been discovered. One hopes that in the days to come this process leads to unearthing of truly great directors and writers by film producers and stars.

RKS