All Is Well: All is NOT well about this movie

The 2012 hit “Oh My God”, was very different and questioned many religious beliefs which made Umesh Shukla a name to reckon with.

The expectations with “All Is Well”, Umesh’s second offering was high, though the movie has been in the making for a long time.

“All Is well” is a typical family drama of a dysfunctional family of Mr Bhalla (Rishi Kapoor), his son Inder Bhalla (Abhishek Bachchan) and Inder’s mother Pammi Bhalla (Supriya Pathak), situation forces the family to get scattered, and they come together for a family crisis created by the local goon Chima (Mohammad Zeeshan Ayub). How they bond in the time of crisis and how they discover each other is what the story deals with.

The story by Umesh Shukla and screenplay by Sumit Arora & Niren Bhatt, starts with a promise which looks like a road movie of a family but fizzles out completely half hour into the movie. The humor is forced and you get a feeling that you are watching a movie from the 90’s, in short the humor looks quite dated. The reason between the rift between the Bhalla couple does not look very convincing, they are just shown fighting which happens in any couples lives. Inder’s character and his phobia of getting married looks quite meek. Almost all the characters look over the top, especially Cheema’s character the comic villain which was a trend in late 80’s and early 90’s, but unfortunately the villain becomes a joker. The whole sequence of the Mama and the Mami is unnecessary and does not create any impact rather than adding on to the buffoonery. All the characters of Nimmi (Asin) Inder’s girlfriend look like bunch of jokers which hardly make you laugh.

Another flaw in the writing are the dialogues which sound dated and even the comic dialogues are hardly few which make you laugh. Overall the writing of the movie right from the screenplay to the dialogues, it is a big disappointment, whereas it was the strongest point of Umesh Shukla’s previous movie “OMG”.

The movie lacks on the performance front as well. Abhishek Bachchan who is seen on screen after 3 years and who plays Inder Bhalla looks completely disinterested and acts with the same monotonous expression. Rishi Kapoor as Bhalla is tries very hard to give a convincing performance but the weak writing fails him, but yet full credit to him for giving an honest and sincere effort. Supriya Pathak as Pammi is completely wasted with hardly any dialogues and with the same expression throughout the movie. Asin as Nimmi is as irritating as she has been in her previous movies. Mohammed Zeeshan Ayub as Cheema is the only actor which is successful in making you laugh in a few sequences but he is also pulled down by the poor writing. Rest of the cast perform quite average. So the movie fails in the performance segment as well.

Other technical departments like art direction by Munish Sappel are very average, so is the cinematography by Sameer Arya which is extremely inconsistent and dated. The editing by Sanjay Sankla is not upto the mark…

Music has been given by a plethora of music director’s right from Himesh Reshammiya, Amaal Mallik, Mithoon & Meet Bros…but none of the songs create any impact though they are melodious since none of the songs are placed aptly…

Umesh Shukla fails badly though he had a stellar cast and a good production house backing him. It is absolutely below average attempt from a director who showed promise in his first venture.

Overall “All is Well” is neither a comedy nor a family drama and a below average movie, I will go with One & a Half Stars…..

Movie Rating: (1.5 / 5)