It is interesting that the movie Meenaxi suffers from the same problem as the main character shown in the movie. The main character Nawab (played wonderfully by Raghuvir Yadav) is inspired in a flash of a second and sees an entire story unfold before his eyes but when he tries to pen the story down, he suffers and is unable to extract the beauty from his mind onto paper. What a common problem most writers have!! The stories written inside the human mind are often more interesting than the words that make it on paper.
In the same manner, the story might have been highly interesting for the writers of the movie (Owais Husain and M.F Hussain) yet they cannot translate that vision onto the silver screen. A huge failure of that vision is because of the inept performance of the two lead actors (Tabu & Kunal Kapoor). It's time to state the facts -- Tabu is only useful for roles where she has to sit in a corner crying and playing the helpless woman; she is the last person who can be seductive. This movie required a woman who was seductive, a woman who haunted the mind of the writer, a woman who drove the writer mad. If the writer imagined a character like Meenaxi, then one is forced to say that the writer has no imagination. Even a juvenile writer would imagine a more exotic femme fatale than the Nawab in this movie did.
Now if the Nawab was falling for a poetic image of a woman, then Tabu still fails on that front. She is not poetic, even her body movemovements are awkard, jerky and unpleasant. No man would ever imagine such a BORING fantasy. The less the said of Kunal Kapoor, the better. It is getting highly tiring to have all the male models turned actors sounding like John Abraham. Even if the same person is dubbing for these male models, there is no attempt for creativity in the voice. The playback singers are far more talented.
None the less, Meenaxi is not a complete waste. The movie ventures into interesting areas, but it is frustrating to have such a creative attempt fail in this manner. One can clearly find trademark Santosh Sivan camera shots in the movie. Watch for those close up shots of a camera, the sand flying, the water, etc and you know that Santosh Sivan is letting us know what he is present. In reality, those close up shots have no purpose in the movie. But you can be assured that Indian movie fans will be drolling over the beauty that Sivan has to show us. The truth is the beauty of a movie depends on an array of camera shots and angles, not just some patent 'magic' moment shots which do nothing to uplift a movie from its drowing state.
Final thoughts on Meenaxi -- If the movie was reshot frame by frame with a real exotic Indian woman (namely NOT Tabu), and a trained actor (namely NOT a male-model-turned-actor-who-has-not-learned-acting), the movie might be saved. Until then, like the sands of Jaisalmer, Meenaxi fizzles harmless into the horizon.
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