What Are The Odds? Review: Netflix’s New Films Plummets To New Depths Of Absurdity!

What Are The Odds?

Starring Abhay Deol, Yashaswini Dayama,Karanvir Malhotra

Directed by  Megha Ramaswamy

Rating: * (1  star)

Towards the  end of this dreadfully droll and consciously  ‘cool’  film, the girl named Vivek asks  the  boy named  Bobby Darling…okay I am kidding…boy  named  Ashwin, ‘What  are  the  odds  of a boy like you hitching  up with  a girl like me?’

I have  a similar question for  the  brains behind this balderdash. “What are the odds that we can sit right  till the end  of  this weird film , so proud of it that its wears its weirdness  on its chest  like  a soldier’s medallion?”

What Are The Odds is not just an  odd piece  of  cinema,it’s also  excruciatingly unfunny while trying to be just the opposite.

A  man tilting on  the edge of  a  precipice says, ‘Main suicide nahin su-su kar raha hoon.”

Ha ha.

The  15-year old  heroine  tells her  40-year  old crush, “Salman Khan  dates teenagers.”

Abhay Deol looks  like he has just been compared with Donald Trump.

A  fish talks to us in Jugal Hansraj’s voice. Last  I saw him playing a child molester  in Sujoy Ghosh’s film. This must be Jugal’s  chance for atonement.But where  is  the  way out for  us in this  cloistered  kick-in-the-groins of caprice? We can’t even get up and leave, since we’re watching it at home, hoping and praying that the next Netflix offering would be a redemptive measure.

To those who are still interested in knowing the plot, here is the thing. There is  none. The narrative  about two schoolgoing teenagers spending a day together  talking to various mammals and  amphibians  all of whom behave  like they are high on  substance abuse,  reads like  a series of improvised shots strung together  anyhow. The  spoken dialogues, in English ,  sound  like they are being read out of a moody teleprinter.

And  the  actors  are in it just to  be fey.  So we get Sulabha Deshande dancing on   the streets, Rajshri Despande ranting in an elevator, Manu Rishi  jumping  around  a in tree suit, and of course as mentioned  Jugal Hansraj speaking  out of a fish bowl.

The central  pair is played by  talented youngsters Yashaswini Dayama  and  Karanvir Malhotra whom we’ve seen in much better places. Here they go from gag to gag looking at the  director  for their  next cue. Abhay Deol shows up  after  half an hour as an  affable musician with Monica Dogra as  his girlfriend, who steals the  heroine Vivek’s song . Plagiarism is one thing we cannot accuse this film of. But originality per se  is  not a  virtue. Not here at  least.