All Is Well review: This Rishi Kapoor, Abhishek Bachchan-starrer will put you to sleep

Abhishekh Bachchan wants to be a rockstar. (It’s okay. To err is to human, after all.) He is working very hard to that end, we are told. In Pattaya. Given that Bangkok is the new Lonavla, it doesn’t seem absurd that a man hopes to sing Hindi songs at crossings and malls there and become a star. However, there is a minor problem. You can’t be sure if this aspiring rockstar knows how to play the guitar. He just carries it around the way Paris Hilton carried her chihuahua with her. He is in a complicated relationship with a girl called Nimmi. Nimmi is played by Asin who is a pro at playing women with as much individuality as a traffic signal. Nimmi’s other qualities are low self respect, poker straight hair and zero knowledge of the fact that she is the most irritating creature to have walked this planet since Viveik Oberoi in Krissh 3. That’s a match made in cinematic hell. But that’s not the end of the story. Bachchan, who plays Inder, is a second grade NRI who landed in Bangkok when he wanted to go abroad. Before that, he lived in Kasol with his parents. The said parents include Rishi Kapoor, who runs a loss-making bakery and Supriya Pathak, who seems to be a tribute to Nirupa Roy. The father and son had a fight before the son left and landed in Bangkok. The father also slapped the son. [caption id=“attachment_2402648” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  A still image from All Is Well[/caption] However, they have to be reunited. How else will we have a film? So enter idiotic villain with weird hairstyle. It is revealed that Inder’s father has borrowed so much money that moneylender Cheema now wants to sell off his bakery to recover the money. To make things a little more poignant, Inder’s mother Pammi is suffering from Alzheimer’s. And Nimmi clings to him like humidity on Mumbai. You can’t imagine anyone with a worse life than Inder’s. Somehow, after a weird turn of events, Inder plus family plus clingy Nimmi are on the run with Cheema on their trail. The rest of the film is a nice lullaby. If you are not a committed sleeper, then a jarring song or two might wake you up in between. However, none of this is shocking or even worrying. What is truly disturbing is the fact that Umesh Shukla, the same man who made Oh My God! made this. That film was taut, intelligent and funny and starring a stellar Paresh Rawal. From it’s premise to its dialogues, everything worked. Coming from the same man, All Is Well is even more of a letdown. All is Well’s biggest weakness is what ails most of Bollywood - its plot. It’s lazy. And that kind of complacency is slightly shocking. When you have a film that already has to bear the burden that is Abhishek Bachchan and Asin together, you need a robust script to prop it up. Then the film reduces a brilliant Supriya Pathak to a prop in the set. Rishi Kapoor is not bad but he has as much clue about what he is supposed to be doing as Abhishek Bachchan’s guitar does. The director sneaks in a high voltage song, which we suspect is supposed to wake you up in case you have dozed off. Farrate Marke sung by auto-tune icon Kanika Kapoor is fun and zesty. If it doesn’t manage to wake you up, the ghost of Tera Jadoo Chal Gaya coming back to haunt Abhishek Bachchan’s dancing talents surely will. Oh, Sonakshi Sinha is quite delightful in the song though. However, all this put together is not as great a crime as the one that the film inflicts on a song called “Aye Mere Humsafar”. The film takes the lovely Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak original and turns it into an insipid, bland ballad sung with literally no passion. The lyrics too are changed to some nonsensical mish mash. It’s like someone picking up a perfectly seasoned piece of tandoori chicken up from your plate, holding it under a running tap and putting it back on your plate. After all this, if you have not dozed off or walked out during the film, give yourself a pat in the back. You can now sit through pretty much anything without feeling malevolent towards humanity. And that’s about all that is well with All Is Well.