The premise of Hawaizaada had potential to be a really interesting account of Shivkar Bapuji Talpade who is believed to have flown an airplane even before the Wright brothers. While the motives of debut-director Vibhu Puri are in place but not enough importance is given either to writing a good screenplay or to dwell upon actual facts and science. What we get is dozens of needless songs stuffed in with a poor romance story and juvenile attempts at humor. I don't know how a talented lad like Ayushmann Khurrana ended up in this travesty.
Ayushmann plays Shivkar Talpade who is not very good studies and hence has been failing in the same class for years now. He is very intelligent though when it comes to building things and practical knowledge. But before we can see him go on building an aircraft we have to sit through an atrocious hour of romance with his lady-love Sitara (Pallavi Sharda) and a couple of boring songs. Both of them belong to different classes which angers Shiv's father removing him from his house and Sitara also leaves him believing it is not suitable for them to marry. After all that clichéd melodrama finally Shiv meets an old science-enthusiast Shastri (Mithun Chakraborty) who is trying to build the first ever flying vehicle with help of verses from ancient Vedas. He sees the spark in Shiv when Shiv makes a model he Shastri built take-off with his knowledge. They both start working together and Shiv leans a lot about Vedas from Shastri. Then our hero's lady love is back in the story to stuff in more melodrama and songs. I really don't understand why Bollywood needs to have romance and dozens of songs in every film no matter of the subject or genre. The film runs for a dragging length of 2 and half hours and by the time we see Shiv fly away I was waiting badly for the credits to start rolling to put an end to the boredom.
The positives that here are the glamorous sets filled with glitter and colors. But they do seem a lot artsy to give the historic feel required. The British people shown are ridiculous and the independence propaganda is also thrown in making the screenplay way too out of place. Not much heed is given in the script to actual science behind the airplane models rather the characters speak one- dimensional dialogues consisting of nothing more than 'Your plane will fly, keep your hopes alive'. Ayushmann tries his best but poor dialogues overshadow his commitment. Mithun as the typical mentor adds nothing new and Pallavi's career flight is yet to take off with back-to-back disasters Besharam and this one. Only silver lining I could spot is the child actor Naman Jain portraying Shivkar's nephew. Lot of work was needed in the editing department, the script could have been stretched up to two hours maximum. Hawaizaada pursues for the flight for too long that making the actual flight tasteless. It has its heart at the right place but unfortunately that's the only thing going its way. Utterly disappointing.
RATING: [1/5]
