Starring Keerthy Suresh, Miss India (2020) is a typical rags-to-riches film. Appearing as Manasa Samyuktha, a bright young lady from India who moves to the USA with her family, where she builds a tea retail empire in the USA fending off the animosity from the incumbent coffee chain of Jagapathi Babu. The film was ordinary, but not dull. It is available on Netflix India.
For a movie claimed to be happening in the USA, I hardly saw any American locations or Americans characters or even hear American accent from anyone in the film. Maybe the pandemic forced the makers to go to alternate locations and manage with studio set – it could’ve been done a lot better.
For this genre to work, we have to feel the pain of the protagonist who keeps fighting against insurmountable obstacles to realising their dream-like in The Pursuit of Happyness (2006), in Miss India those struggles are few and gets solved quickly. The director could’ve taken inspiration from a book like How STARBUCKS saved my life? or the classic Made in America by Sam Walton.
There were numerous logic gaps, a friend had advised me in advance to ignore them, which I tried to do. I will mention a few for you to get an idea – Manasa takes less than two months to build a retail network in the USA, which is impossible; What happened to the million-dollar cheque that she wins in a competition?; how come the venture capitalist allowed Manasa to take money from the venture to buy an expensive car and designer clothes even before the business turned profitable?, and, lastly how did the two employers/investors of Manasa propose to her – won’t it be considered sexual harassment in the workplace?
The movie manages to maintain the pace and that makes it enjoyable. You can watch it.
Comments