Mistress of Spices: Movie Review

I went to watch Mistress of spices because, will you believe this, Bangalore has become too hot and we needed to be somewhere cool. What better place than PVR ! Aishwarya Rai is an actress (really?!!) I love to hate. (Okay….I loved her in the ad for Nakshatra jewellery). So there were no expectations…but, I still hoped that it would be tolerable.

Here goes the story…..Tilo, as a child, had some magical abilities due to which she was abducted by some bandits. But she somehow escapes and is found in a beach by an old lady and her disciples who take care of her. The old lady teaches her disciples the magical powers of spices and how to use them to help people. After they have learned everything they are sent to far away lands where they will run spice shops and help the local people.

Tilo ends up running Spice Bazaar in San Francisco. She runs the shop and lives by the rules that her teacher had told her to abide by. She should not step out her shop. She should not use spices for her own personal use. She should not touch the skin of anyone else.

Thus goes her life….through which passes a few people with their problems. All this while she is adamant on teaching us the qualities of spices. For example, did you know that blue peppers taken with black jeera would cure you of the obsession of making miserable movies?

Then the ultimate problem comes in the form of an attractive architect Doug. Tilo falls in love and breaks all the divine rules one by one.

Oh! Okay! Even I don’t want to recount this miserably tedious movie.

Plus points: Santhosh Sivan’s cinematography and an instrumental rendition of one of my fav songs aap ke nazron ne samjha pyaar ke kaabil…..


Negatives: Aishwarya Rai and, if you need something more, Dylan McDermott. His acting was as wooden as Aishwarya’s. And ooh yeah…what a chemistry! When they appear together the temperature dropped below zero. You wouldn’t believe that this man is the same one as in The Tenants (I didn’t). May be Aishwarya has that effect on her co-actors.

Don’t even ask me about the director (Paul Berges)….And whoever wrote those dialogues….strangling would be too good for them.



Final warning to the person who decided to make this movie:


Kutte....Kameene.....Mein there khooon pee jaungaaaaa!






Categories: Mistress of Spices, Movie, Review, Aishwarya Rai