Meenaxi   Producer: Culture of The Street Films Director: M.F. Hussain Starring: Tabu, Raghuvir Yadav, Kunal Kapoor, Nadira Babbar, Sadia Turabi, Sharat Saxena and Bharat Kapoor Music: A.R. Rahman Lyrics: Rahat Indori, M.F. Hussain, and Sukhwinder Singh Genre: Art-Film Recommended Audience: Parental Guidance Film Released on: 02 April 2004 Reviewed by: Rakesh Budhu  - Rating: 8.0 / 10   Let us know what you think about this review Music Review

‘Meenaxi: Tale Of 3 Cities’ is the story of a renowned writer who runs out of ideas, half way through his new story. Nawab (Raghuvir Yadav) is a famous and popular novelist of Hyderabad and his problem is that he cannot write anymore as he has a mental block. A beautiful girl named Meenaxi (Tabu) enters the scene and acts as an inspiration for him. She even challenges him to write the story of her life and so Nawab weaves two stories, one against the backdrop of Hyderabad and the other, against the settings of Rajasthan´s Jaisalmer but Meenaxi finds them run of the mill.

He then writes the third story which is set in Prague, but he cannot give it the final shape as he gets confused. All the stories remain unrequited love stories, where the heroine remains confused in the end, along with the audience!

The stories are simple but bland and unexciting with little or no drama. The romance of the two main characters Meenaxi/Maria and Kunal/Kameshwar develops in the beautiful locations and amidst colorful well choreographed songs but the drama still remains very listless.

In the acting department, Tabu looks beautiful though a bit overweight and gives a good performance. However, she does falter in some places when trying to speak like an English woman in Prague. Raghuvir Yadav gives a tremendous performance and dominates the whole cast. Kunal Kapoor has good personality and acts with confidence. Saagar Ishaan Arya, as Karanveer is ordinary and Nadira Babbar, Sadia Turabi, Sharat Saxena and Bharat Kapoor are adequate.

Director M.F. Husain has presented the three cities in the best of their cultural hues (for which equal credit must be given to the cameraman Santosh Sivan) but fails in presenting the unique script as a sensitive drama. A.R. Rahman´s music is rich. Most of the songs are good. ´Yeh Rishta’, ´Chinamma Chilgamma’ are good while the qawwali number ´Noor-un-ala-noor´ is a masterpiece. The picturizations for all the songs are also quite colorful and visually appealing.

On the whole, ‘Meenaxi: A Tale Of 3 Cities´ is too abstract even for the class audience and will fail commercially.