Yeh Zindagi Ka Safar Review

What happens when a strangled duck meets a farmer from the Haryana-Punjab border? You get the quaint byproduct in the form of a film. Trust Bollywood to cough up a movie at the flimsiest of excuses. And trust their naiveté by thinking that having a woman director will end up making the film fly its 'social issue' banner high. No such luck on both the counts.

Jay (Jimmy Shergill) is a reporter in a non-existent scrummy newspaper called Adarsh Times, and he manages to get an exposé about pop star Sareena (Amisha). The exposé, well, exposes that Sareena was adopted. And the female's dad (Gulshan Grover) slaps a Rs. 5 crore defamation suit on the paper.

Sareena then discovers that she was indeed adopted. So she starts baying like a wolf around full moon and engages the audience in some 15 minutes of boohoo. And then the 'I-want-to-meet-my-bio-mom' stuff kicks off, and she embarks on a journey of, ahem, 'self discovery'. You could be pardoned if the whole flick reeks of Fiza to you.

Anyway, she is joined in her quest by reporter babu Jay, who just wants to make an out-of-court settlement and get it over with. They join forces and the trail leads to Sister Namrata (Nafisa Ali), who is the bio-mom.

And this is where Amisha starts her non-stop howling and keeps at it till the end. She sings a song, sniffs and honks her nose, only to resume her caterwauling. Jimmy Shergill is only interested in his scoop to start with, but we all know that just like the pav goes with the bhaji and the pani goes with the puri, the hero and the heroine are just waiting to happen.

Yeh Zindagi... ends up peddling the same stereotypes over and over again, and it's high time someone grew up and stopped administering us this melodrama syrup - the film has more clichés than there are asteroids in the Mars belt. But it is still not exactly castor oil, and you can bear to watch it. There are some good performances by Shergill and Nafisa Ali. But why does Amisha look so constipated? Gauging by the number of her fans, maybe that's the part of the charm. Je ne sais pas.

The first half is kinda okay, and considering the crap that is being doled out these days, this is as good as it gets. The music by Daboo Malik is quite nice, and you can unclench your fist and empty it off the wads of cotton. If you're in the neighborhood, then I suggest you grab that bag of popcorn and march on.