Mitr, My Friend (2002)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Overrated

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Wish the quality of the film, sound and acting were more consistent. Very distracting when the commercials (on one of our local Asian stations) kick in! I very much enjoyed Sobhana's luminous performance as Lakshmi and could sympathize with her feelings of isolation and frustration.This movie was filmed in my neighborhood, the Bay Area, and I imagine Lakshmi's feelings are quite common among women in the local Indian community whose husbands hold very demanding high-tech jobs, who are not themselves well-educated or social, and whose children are exhibiting the worst characteristics of spoiled California young adults. Lakshmi did a very brave thing in attempting to become more educated and independent. Too bad it backfired on her because of her husband's jealousy and insecurity.Unfortunately the actress who played Divya made her very one-note and negative for most of the movie; her performance was very soap opera, which may have been the director's fault rather than hers. It did nothing to generate sympathy for her, and in fact made one more sympathetic toward her mother's character. Not a good thing, as Lakshmi was too judgmental and interfering in her daughter's life. Lakshmi was right, of course - her daughter was too young and immature to live on her own and made the expected terrible decision in choosing her first boyfriend. Maybe Indian mothers haven't caught on to the fact that the surest way to drive a daughter into the arms of the wrong boy is to forbid her from seeing him! That said, Divya's almost instant transformation from bratty teen to friend and confidante of her mother's was hard to believe. The ending was pretty silly, actually, and I never really figured out who the mysterious Internet presence was. If it was the husband, why didn't he seem to know anything about it and why wasn't he wearing a yellow shirt? It clearly wasn't Steve.........guess I will have to watch again.

Mitr has a pretty good concept, interesting story, and a dynamic performance by Shobana who illuminates the screen whenever she is there which, luckily, is most of the movie. Nasir Abdullah, who plays her husband is OK but everyone else in the film seemed like they got their acting chops from Grade D late night cable TV. The daughter, friends, neighbors, -- everyone else -- gave stilted performances as if they were reading their lines. Fortunately, the daughter's performance got better towards the end of the film but the director should have elicited better performances from everyone unless that was their best and the casting crew would have to take the blame for not finding better actors. I would have preferred the over-acting of a lot of Hindi actors than some of the drivel and inane delivery that permeated this film.Despite my misgivings of Mitr, I will still give it a 6 because of Shobana's performance and look forward to seeing her in other projects of better quality. Watching Shobana in action is worth enduring the cringe factor that occurs when watching the other actors.

'Mitr' attempts to portray the conflicts experienced by a traditional Indian mother living in the USA. She devotes her life to her family while her teenage daughter and ambitious husband grow increasingly independent.Far from being a Bollywood production, I felt Mitr is closer to being a a high-school drama caught on film, based on its production quality. The lighting was flat and strange (candlelight dinner on a sunny afternoon?). Every line of dialogue was forced and overdone (clearly the director's decision). The audio was plagued by echo (too distant microphones?). The soundtrack was nonstop georgewinston-ey, with cricket chirps dubbed into the nighttime scenes. Mitr boasts "an all female crew," but the the quality of their work does not reflect well on female professionals in the film industry.Mitr is partly redeemed by its strong character development, but it's poor production quality is so distracting that I did not enjoy watching it.

Mitr plays like a Seventh Heaven episode, a sweet domestic drama about an Indian mom and dad living in the US whose marriage is in trouble and who have a rebellious teenaged daughter. The film is set in the US and must've been made to appeal to the NRI (Non-Resident Indian) population. It was pitched to me as an exploration of the differences between Indian and US culture, but Lakshmi isn't so much an Indian woman as she is a repressed and overprotective mother (this sort of woman also exists in America as no doubt everywhere in the world), and it's a disservice to blame her attitudes on her cultural background.Mitr is a very accessible Indian film, being 95% in English, relatively short (~100 minutes) and lacking the elaborate music-video numbers typical for a Bollywood product.I found it ultimately unsatisfying, primarily because I watch Indian films in order to experience the color of exotic cultures and locales.