Miss India Review: Throwback to a Mundane 90s Soap-Opera!

Starring Keerthy Suresh in the lead role, Miss India, directed by Narendra Nath, is the new direct-to-OTT entry from Tollywood that did not make a huge splash like everyone expected. With a noteworthy ensemble of the cast featuring Rajendra Prasad, VK Naresh, Nadhiya, and Jagapathi Babu in supporting roles. Scheduled to release initially in April 2020, after a few postponements, Netflix picked up the film to strengthen its South Indian exclusive release and debuted it on November 4, 2020.

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The storyline of Miss India revolves around its lead protagonist, Manasa Samyuktha (Keerthy Suresh), who aspires to make it big and aims to set up her own business when she grows up. Subsequently, after completing her academics, she goes through the similar melodramatic pressure that every Indian 24-year-old faces and joins a job that she isn’t interested in. As the narrative progresses, the remainder of the film follows her quest to give up the mundane office-going lifestyle and make her childhood dream come true by starting a business.

One of the main reasons why I disliked watching Miss India is because of its conventional storyline from the get-go. Reminiscing a narrative that we only see in a mid-2000s movie or the daily Telugu soap-opera shows, the poorly written overdramatic family interactions, and the tiresome dialogue that fail to evoke any emotion played significant roles in this film’s inferior output.

Additionally, the screenplay also lacks that much-needed oomph from beginning to the end and navigates only through a familiar route that thousands of other similar movies in the genre already visited. Therefore, your attention leisurely moves to your Twitter timeline, the leftovers in the fridge, and you will start to rethink the things you could have completed instead of watching this film.

Furthermore, alongside the unexciting story, the writers of Miss India also do not offer likable characters with some personality and follow the same old technique of writing personas which only belong to a TV serial. Even though we witness an improvement in the lead protagonist’s journey, the familiarity and the predictability factor do not benefit her stand-out, or to the least, memorable.

Keerthy Suresh, whose previous film—Penguin, another direct-to-OTT release, does not reflect the same amount of charisma or elegance she managed to portray in the 2018 blockbuster hit, Mahanati. Besides her ‘been there, seen before’ character, shedding a ton of weight, the terrible choice of costumes, make-up, and the portrayal of as the protagonist did not provide any excitement from start to finish. The remainder of the cast did a decent job as there is nothing much for them to explore.

Technically, once again, Miss India fails to impress through and through. Thaman’s run-of-the-mill music, ordinary camera work, and production design, and the unnecessary reason for setting the majority of the film in the USA prove why this film does not work in any aspect. Furthermore, with minimal changes, the narrative could’ve effortlessly transitioned to a Hindi-speaking metro city like New Delhi or Mumbai, but, America seems to be the ideal place for the producers to waste money these days.

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Overall, Miss India is a colossal waste of star power from Keerthy Suresh to VK Naresh and Rajendra Prasad. The story, the screenplay, dialogues, emotional sequences were bland, forgettable, and are something you’ve already seen before. Although the previous South Indian direct-to-OTT releases on Netflix extended from good to average on the quality scale, Miss India tarnished that reputation the global streaming giant garnered this year as it is nowhere near watchable. Watch ‘Miss India’ on Netflix here.

Rating – 2/5 | Grade – C

Images via Netflix India