Mumbai Salsa (drama)
        Cast : Vir Das, Linda Arsenio, Manjari Phadnis,Dilip Thadeshwar
Direction : Manoj Tyagi
        Music :  Adnan Sami
       Lyrics  :  Sameer
   Starring  :  Linda Arsenio, Indraneel Sengupta, Dilip Thadeshwar, Manjari Phadnis, Vir Das, Neelam Chauhan 

Metro-centric films are being made with amazing regularity these days. Therefore, it doesn't come as a surprise that the writer of PAGE 3, Manoj Tyagi, has chosen to narrate the dysfunctional lives of the youth in his directorial debut MUMBAI SALSA.

Frankly, a film like MUMBAI SALSA isn't everyone's idea of entertainment. It attempts to portray the lives of eight friends in a metropolis [Mumbai] in the most realistic manner. At places, it works. At times, it doesn't.

EASY to label this one as Metro, part two. But Mumbai Salsa has a freshness and an innovative feel that makes it watchable despite the fact that it follows Metro's tale of sizing up the cosmosexual lifestyle in New Age yuppie India. Here again you have the cosmopolitan highs (Mahaburger size money, masti and maza ) balanced against the urban lows (achy infidelity, heartbreak and akelapan ). And the narrative style follows a similar pattern too, as it plays peeping Tom into the lives of four different couples. But the similarities end there. For Mumbai Salsa's moral dilemmas and gender benders unfold in a deliciously irreverent manner, a fine blend of the serious and the comic.

The film tries to hold a mirror on almost everything modern: mutating moral values, one night stands, a bit on the side, lesbianism, teen abortions, male chauvinism versus newage feminism...Yet, it never gets into sloganeering.

Eight successful young Mumbaikars, living in the fast lane, meet up in a Mumbai bar called Mumbai Salsa and end up trying to make a life with each other. Of course, almost all the relations begin on a flippant note, mostly as 'one night sits', as protagonist Vir Das insists. Sometimes, they even begin with derision, as in the case of Subbu who carries his tradition Tamilian mindset to the Mumbai corporate world and looks at the girl from the West as suspect, bad wife material. But stereotypes are gently broken and love blossoms through hiccups and hindrances, never losing humour as the sub- text.

Scriptwriter Manoj Tyagi ( Page 3, Corporate, Apharan ) picks up vignettes from real life and makes an impressive debut as a director too. And helping him in creating this eclectic mix are his band of fresh new performers (watch out for Vir Das trying a Woody Allen) who live their roles on screen. Get your fill on the Bar, Barista, Boardroom, Bedroom brigade. 

courtesy by the times of india