'The Wishing Tree': All heart, but little else (Review)

Film: "The Wishing Tree"; Writer-Director: Manika Sharma; Cast: Shabana Azmi, Harshpreet Kaur, Mark Shaw, Shivani Joshi and Abhas Yadav; Rating: **

At times, cinema is more commendable for its intention rather than execution. At the execution level, "The Wishing Tree", which opened this week to a near-blank response, leaves much to be desired. The performances by the children are embarrassingly loud and self-conscious. Even the slew of veterans from the redoubtable Saurabh Shukla (bullying and spanking kids in a clumsy wig) to hardly seen veteran theatre actress Mahabano Mody-Kotwal, come up with woefully clunky performances.

This lack of tact and subtlety in telling an essentially eco-friendly parable about saving a tree could be seen to be symptomatic of what ails children's films in our country. We just don't make films that connect with the younger audience. Either the so-called children's films talk down to kids or otherwise try too hard to think and talk like children.

"The Wishing Tree" belongs to the latter category of well-meaning but abysmally ill-informed children's films. It aspires to walk that extra mile towards eco-awareness but ends up wheezing and breathless in no time at all, thanks to the oafish writing and hammy performances.

Nonetheless, this is a film that means well and deserves an audience for that reason. Then there is the formidable Shabana Azmi. She seems to have fun playing an exotic esoteric mysterious eco-spirit in deep conversation with nature. Her nature-friendly song, shot in beautifully pristine locations, reminded me of the iconic "Phir se aaiyo badra bidesi" song in Gulzar's "Namkeen".

Cinematographer Rajeev Jain loves nature. It's the human characters who let nature down. Writer-director Manika Sharma builds a doddering architecture of mortifying cliches. The four principal child characters are from the four main religions practised in 'secular' India. They are all given one emotional or physical shortcoming to overcome which they do with flying colours.

Harshpreet Kaur plays Nikita who is overweight and ridiculed. The poor kid is made to act 'FAT & RIDICULED' in bold capitals. The Muslim kid Fatima (Shivani Joshi) loves Shah Rukh Khan (pretext for video footage of Shah Rukh), and her mom (Navneet Nishan) seconds that emotion. But dad Rajit Kapoor is a an SRK-hater (a bad fan encounter in the past?) and when his wife jumps up in SRK's support, he reminds her that a good Muslim wife doesn't whoop for a man other than her husband.

By the time Bobby Darling showed up as a wailing widow (no less), I was ready to cut down as many trees as it takes to build a pyre for this nobly-intended film burning up in its own self-righteousness.

"The Wishing Tree" made me wish there were less painful ways of preserving trees than being made to watch a film that doesn't know when to stop wagging its finger at us for being so callous towards nature.

Sometimes, talking about cruelty to nature can be awfully cruel.

--IANS

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