CAST: Madhuri Dixit, Manav Kaul, Sanjay Kapoor, Muskaan Jaffery, Rajshri Deshpande, Lakshvir Saran, Suhasini Muley, Gagan Arora, Shubhangi Latkar, Abhishek Khandekar,
DIRECTOR: Shri Rao, Karishma Kohli, Bejoy Nambiar
BLUF: A global superstar, wife, and mom suddenly vanishes without a trace. As police and loved ones search for answers to her disappearance, her perfectly crafted facade is stripped away, revealing hidden truths and painful lies in the life of an iconic actress.
THE MEAT AND THE POTATOES
Anamika Anand portrayed by Madhuri Dixit, is a Bollywood star. Her perfect life consists of her loving husband, two lovely children, well-staffed luxe house, and a happy looking family. The movie starts with Anamika with her husband at an awards ceremony where she is getting felicitated. She gets home, checks on her children and retires for the night. In the morning, her closest staff do not find her in her room. Her phone and wallet are left behind and Anamika, the super star has disappeared. This is the story of her private life, the reality behind the façade and who really Anamika Anand is.
IN THE KNOW
The Fame Game has been written like a thin slice of bacon that does very little to give taste to the large size McBurger beneath it with layers of unspoken complexities of a celebrity’s life, It is almost close to a ship story written by fans on whattapad with no mention of the real issues in fame and public life.
The cliches of media attention, the politics of the movie industry, the finance game, trust and deception are all packed into the 8 episode series arbitrarily. The screenplay is weak and despite the finesse of the production quality, the on-screen dialogues reduce the effect of the brilliant actor ensemble the show boasts of.
New York based, Sri Rao , the Upenn alum and co-writer, director of this series seems to have done only token research about celeb lives and it seems a token homage to the complicated issues packed into the length of the series.
Bejoy Nambiar and Karishma also direct some of The Fame Game episodes.
Initially publicized as a missing person whodunnit, the series goes back and forth on several timelines touching none of the whodunnit for almost six episodes.It is quite a statement when a Dharma production talks about nepotism and then delivers a story to show the workings of the same as well. Manav Kaul is convincing as the bipolar Manish Khanna deeply in love with Anamika. The chemistry created between Madhuri’s Anamika and Manav’s Manish is substantial.Madhuri fills the screen with her 1000-watt smile and a larger-than-life personality.Sanjay Kapoor is still the awkward same actor we saw decades ago. Evidently, he did not get the memo about acting school.
The LTBTQ item on the checklist is also crossed with the relationship of Anamika’s son, her acceptance and support for his sexuality and her respect for his life’s choices. The same is also done with the unnecessary insight into ACP Shobha Trivedi’s life with her partner and their kid. Why that angle was required is a mystery more difficult to solve than the missing Anamika case.
Big loophole in the story of the murder of Billy, Anamika’s makeup person by an orphaned fan ( Gagan Arora), who believes he is the son of Manav and Anamika.The police are not showing closing the loop on that issue at all and there fore fails to be a convincing detective thriller. The story touches upon everything that Karan Johar could have thought to glorify in living room discussions – mental health, body image, domestic abuse, fan toxicity and the media circus but they all seem like airscrews for a huge unstable aircraft that just does not land.
If the series was meant to deal with the dark side of celebrity life, it failed to.The end of the series with the ultimate resolution is quite a surprise and Muskaan Jaferi ( Javed Jaferi’s sister, Jagdeep’s daughter) makes an impressive debut.
WHAT WE LOVED
Madhuri
Manav
WHAT WE MISSED
A cohesive story
Screenplay
Direction
