‘Business is war. It’s not just business, it’s personal!’ reads a board at an established coffee company in America. And for Manasa Samyuktha (Keerthy Suresh) from Miss India movie which was released on Netflix on Wednesday, the war had indeed been a personal one.
Even while being a kid, she set her goal- to pursue MBA and start a business. She hails from a middle-class family from Andhra Pradesh's Lambasingi and as time passes tragedy strikes. Her father is diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Her grandfather passes away.
Along with her family, she relocates to the US after her brother gets a job. While she still cherishes her dream of becoming a businesswoman, her family refuses to acknowledge her goal.
Manasa Samyukta finally agrees to take up a job as per her brother's wish.
‘Coffee is not my cup of tea’ is how Manasa Samyuktha puts it when asked for a coffee and thus decides to venture into Indian Chai business in America with the brand name Miss India.
Keerthy’s Manasa manages to set up her tea business and take on KSK Coffee, a competitive coffee chain in the US headed by Kailash Shiva Kumar (Jagapathi Babu). Business is war, and it is this war the movie less depicts.
The concept and thread line to make a film on a woman entrepreneur are well conceived. But the script doesn’t really convince us -- rather it fails to inspire.
We get to see an ambitious woman who strives to achieve success, but the situations are bland, absurd and clumsy.
“You are the owner of your life, founder and sole proprietor of it. You are going to miss out on an opportunity. We should be our only competitor…” one gets to hear such philosophical lines -- Preachier than motivating.
In a scene, where Manasa’s colleague explains how she had been asked by her family to quit job after marriage, Manasa’s dialogues doesn’t empathize and only melodramatise.
With misogynistic dialogues, the film also aims to highlight the struggles of women in a male-dominated society who expect women to be “simple wives for easy lives”.
If the first half, which shows Manasa and her family's struggle, is a laggard, the second half tests our patience to reel out a predictable success story.
Having said that, there are certain moments that do work. The mass moments here goes to Keerthy Suresh, who effortlessly carries the film on her shoulder. With expensive cars and outfits in tow, she is a stunner in every frame.
The other star who grabs attention is Jagapathi Babu, but more than his villainy avatar, he tends to stray to the funny terrain – The final scene proves it.
Probably, the one reason why the film fails to connect could be because it fails to make us believe that the film is set in the US.
Almost everyone understands and talks in Telugu!
Though Miss India runs high on dreams, it is low on fulfilling it. To sum up, the film might not be everyone’s cup of tea!
