Mili is the story of survival. Mili Naudiyal (Janhvi Kapoor) resides in Dehradun with her father (Manoj Pahwa). She is a nurse by degree and wants to fly to Canada for better job prospects and salary. She is taking IELTS classes and working in a fast-food outlet called Doon's Kitchen in a mall. Mili is in a relationship with Sameer (Sunny Kaushal), a good-for-nothing guy who is finding excuses to not take up a job. She pushes him to apply and get employed. She decides to introduce Sameer to her father once he lands a job. One day, Sameer lands a job opportunity in Delhi. He has to leave the next day. He calls Mili and gives her the good news. Mili is overjoyed and asks him to pick her up from her workplace. Sameer is drunk and nevertheless, he picks up Mili. On the way, he gets nabbed by the cops for drunk riding and both are taken to the police station. Mili's father is summoned and he is humiliated by Inspector Satish Rawat (Anuraag Arora) for letting her daughter roam around with an irresponsible guy. Mili's father is upset with her behavior and he stops talking to her. Mili, meanwhile, is upset with Sameer and refuses to take his calls. The next day, she goes to work but is apprehensive about returning home. She stays in Doon's Kitchen even after her working hours. She finally decides to leave at around midnight. This is when her two colleagues request her to put some food items in the freezer room. She agrees. While she is storing the food, her manager (Vikram Kochhar), who is unaware that she is inside, locks the freezer and leaves. A terrified Mili knocks and shouts for help, but it falls on deaf ears. Worse of all, she left her mobile phone outside the freezer. Hence, she has no way to call for help. What happens next forms the rest of the film. MILI is an official remake of the Malayalam film HELEN [2019; written by Alfred Kurian Joseph, Noble Babu Thomas and Mathukutty Xavier]. The story is unusual and promising. Ritesh Shah's adapted screenplay is uncomplicated and riddled with some very entertaining and captivating moments. However, the build-up and introduction of the characters and their dynamics with each other take up too much time. Ritesh Shah's dialogues are situational and normal. Mathukutty Xavier's direction is quite simple and effective. The second half is devoted to Mili being stuck in the freezing room. How he manages to grip the audience in these scenes and how he intersperses it with what's happening outside are praiseworthy. Secondly, the treatment is very mainstream, and the intent is to appeal to a larger audience. On the flipside, the first half is slow, and too much time is taken before the director arrives at the principal track of the protagonist being stuck in the freezer. At some places in the second half as well, one can feel that the film is dragging. MILI starts on a fine note and depicting the ant being stuck in the refrigerator is a great idea. Sameer's introduction is bizarre (notice more than half of the moviegoers are watching a 3D film without wearing 3D glasses!) and his track starts a bit too suddenly. Two scenes that stand out in the first half are Mili admonishing her father for smoking and the drama at the police station. The intermission point is 'chilling' (pun intended). Post interval, the film goes on another level as Mili attempts to survive the sub-zero temperatures while her father and Sameer put their differences aside and tide over the challenges to find her. The finale is lovely. Janhvi Kapoor delivers yet another bravura performance. She hardly has any dialogue in the second half but watch out for how she pulls off the difficult act. Even in the first half, she is impressive. Sunny Kaushal is likeable and shines in the second half. Manoj Pahwa has a very important part and rocks the show. Anuraag Arora also does well and suits the part. Vikram Kochhar is hilarious. Sanjay Suri (Inspector Ravi Prasad) is superb in a cameo. Rajesh Jais (Mohan Chacha), Jasleen (Jasleen Kaur), junior inspector Satish Singh and the security guard are fair. Seema Pahwa (Devki Negi) is wasted and disappears after her lone scene in the beginning. Jackie Shroff has a massy special appearance although the character's motive is unconvincing. A R Rahman's music is poor. Not a single song stands out. However, his background score is terrific and adds to the chilling effect. Sunil Karthikeyan's cinematography is neat. Apurwa Sondhi's production design is of a fine standard. Gayatri Thadani's costumes are straight out of life. Lorven Studio's VFX is decent. Monisha R Baldava's editing is great and some scenes are smartly cut. But a few scenes could have been shorter. On the whole, MILI is a gripping thriller and is aided by a very fine performance by Janhvi Kapoor. At the box office, it will open on a slow note due to limited buzz and awareness, however, it has the potential to attract moviegoers due to positive word of mouth.Read more

Unlike a disaster movie, where you don't know if the person struck by calamity will make it alive or not, the survival genre spells out the outcome by definition itself. In Mathukutty Xavier's Hindi remake of his National Award winner, Helen, it's not suspense but the volatility of circumstances intensifying into a life or death situation that not only test a man's instinct for survival but also his humanity when confronted by a disturbing lack of it. Who knew something as commonplace as missing a call -- because the phone was in another room -- can have such terrifying inferences? Carry the phone at all times, charge the phone at all times -- Alfred Kurian Joseph and Noble Babu Thomas's screenplay, adapted by Ritesh Shah for the remake, plays on our innermost paranoia while giving us something a little more meaningful to chew on over the course of its two nail-biting hours. Like the Malayalam original, Mili has chills and thrills aplenty but what gives a young woman's solitary struggle its significance is the goodwill she holds, the reconciliation it inspires. Often in building a perilous premise, writers neglect to make us care about the person caught in its midst. But the butterflies I felt in my stomach are testament to Mili Naudiyal's (played by Janhvi Kapoor) likeability. I wanted her ordeal to end, I wanted her to feel safe. When Dehradhun's ultimate sunshine girl finds herself trapped inside the refrigerating room of a fast food joint in a mall, darkness abounds and wee hours of night quickly unravel into an intense drill of survive and seek. Where Vikramaditya Motwane's Trapped was a more evolved, existential experience of an indifferently treated life, Mili's predicament plays out like a scary episode she will someday shiver recounting to a crowd of awestruck well-wishers. From the ant in the opening credits to the pedantic, pestering restaurant manager (a cantankerous Vikram Kochhar) -- everything leading up to the moment until then -- is foretelling of the danger ahead and if at all Mili's equipped to handle it. As a 24-year-old nursing graduate preparing for better prospects in Canada (cold, cold, Canada), Mili works night shifts at a mall eatery and wants to rescue her mortgaged family home by clearing off all debts as well as her curing her doting daddy from his unhealthy smoking addiction. Her life-saver temperament, which includes confiscating her father's lighter and cigarettes, come in handy for graver emergencies soon enough. If one half of Mili sees her going from pink to purple (good job, make-up department) battling minus 17 degrees cold in a storage room, her rocky romance with a boy from another caste (Sunny Kaushal) and the hostilities it brings about form the rest. Mili is mostly a loyal remake but minimises the impact of Helen's socio-political commentary by changing its religious prejudices for thinly-veiled casteism. Mili is reflective of its titular heroine's congenial worldview and takes pride in her inherent niceness. Although when she blows the last of her warm breath over a frozen treat for a rodent she's befriended a few hours ago, the upshot feels more Disney Princess than Cast Away. Bottomline: Most people are better than their conditioning and circumstances. Mili's father may feel disappointed by his daughter's unintended indiscretions but he never once stops caring. Mili's boyfriend makes some foolish judgements, but he's still a decent chap. The only conspicuous villain of the piece is a cop (Anurag Arora) hellbent on creating hurdles. Like Girish Kulkarni's spiteful coach in Dangal, Mili goes out of its way to accommodate his malice that's clearly designed to heighten the drama, delay the rescue. It's to Anurag Arora's credit that his obstruction never hits a false note and highlights the deep-rooted toxicity and frustrations of a bigoted monster. Sanjay Suri's fuming entry as his upright senior is exactly the sort of comeuppance it needed. I am still on the fence about a certain Biddu's random cameo and noble gesture. Mostly though, Mili gets its casting bang on. Manoj Pahwa's darling papa presence sends warm fuzzies across the screen. His easy-peasy affections towards Janhvi and believable figure of worry as he scampers for her whereabouts reiterate what a natural he is. Sunny Kaushal has a knack for conveying that his heart is in the right place even when his timing is not. That is exactly why he deserves bigger and better opportunities than he gets. The new breed of actors are a groomed lot and Janhvi's attempts to pass off as someone who doesn't know her 'in' from her 'or' isn't entirely convincing. But fledgling grammar issues aside, Mili establishes her as an actor striving to be taken seriously. Janhvi Kapoor is interested in author-backed roles. There's an inbuilt, always-on calm setting within her that colours all her performances. She communicates at her own pace and meter, which is characteristic of the mild-mannered persona she has portrayed in all her movies so far. As Mili, her vulnerability and grace stay put but impressive strength emerges out of her physical exertions. Cold is a vile feeling. Mili endures it at a claustrophobic degree. Within seconds, a familiar space and her daily encounters turn into her supreme antagonist, attacking her with its frosty air and furious vents. It's a do-or-die situation for Mili and a prove-her-mettle scenario for Janhvi. She successfully demonstrates her charisma to survive extreme, extended focus.Read more