STORY
Maja Ma is about a Gujarati boy Tejas who is in love with Esha and wants to get married. During the parents’ meetup, a rumor sparks in society about Tejas’ mother Pallavi when she is exposed in the video admitting to her daughter Tara that she is a lesbian.
REVIEW
Maja Ma has a lot of social issues to work on. A typical middle-class Gujarati family marrying into NRI. Then Tejas’ sister, who is an activist for LGBTQIA+ rights. And then the mystery behind Tejas’ mother who is highly insecure and unable to decide if she must tell the world what she is. Three different elements in the same plot challenge writing and grows a lot of responsibility on the director’s shoulders. Sadly, Maja Ma collapses itself by staying in the bubble and not provoking the resistance.
Within half an hour to the start, Tara finds out that mom is lesbian, just before Esha and her parents are reaching India from the US. There was no buildup before the revelation so the reaction was flat.
Director Anand Tiwari didn’t bother to take risks at all. When Tejas’ family receives Esha’s at the airport, the director didn’t show how both parents interact. The biggest directional miss of the film was when Pallavi is exposed in the festival, the aftermath is skipped and then Pallavi is depicted to be on her bed with her family taking care of her. How can you not shoot the moments after she got exposed in front of society and Esha’s parents?
I am further surprised that the continuity didn’t even bother to reflect on the reaction of Pallavi’s husband Manohar. He looked quite normal.
I don’t know why but Esha and her parents’ American accents sounded to me pretty fake. And then Esha’s father using a lie detector on Pallavi was too far a stretch. How can a family marry their boy in a house where the girl’s father uses this machine on the boy’s mother? How come Tejas didn’t protest or oppose? How come the family didn’t take a stand against it? I can understand the girl’s father testing the boy but his parents? That is low.
Another miss was leaving the culprit behind who made the video viral. How did the culprit escape? How was the elephant in the room not addressed? So, Maja Ma suffers from careless writing.
PERFORMANCES
The film had some good performances. Gajraj Rao continues his superb form and what impresses me about him is his body language hits the right tone. His style of communication is very natural. Srishti Shrivastava and Simone Singh in supporting roles are excellent though. The biggest plus was the heart of the film Madhuri Dixit. She proves again why is she such a phenomenal actress and one of the biggest legends of the cinema. Just look at her facial tone when Tara presses for a response. In fact, the mother/daughter arguments were intense.
CLOSING REMARKS
Maja Ma wasted a life out of the story and couldn’t do justice to the points the film wanted to speak about. A mother/wife in a typical household turning out to be a lesbian is something we do not think of in the film. The film deserved a better script and needed to execute the project like that of ‘2 States‘.
RATINGS: 3/10
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Sami Naik | Film Critic 