The Irani family - which lives in an upscale south Mumbai neighbourhood - owns an Irani café called Cafe Rustom. Maska opens on the nineteenth birthday of the aforementioned privileged teen Rumi Irani (Kamani), who is gifted his dad Rustom's (Jaaved Jaaferi, from Dhamaal) hand-me-downs by his mother Diana (Koirala). In doing the latter, it not only defies their characterisations, but feels like wish-fulfilment. To make matters worse, all its female characters - played by Manisha Koirala (Dil Se.), singer Shirley Setia, and Nikita Dutta (Ek Duje Ke Vaaste) - exist only as accessories to the journey of the male lead, with the younger ones throwing themselves at men. It's okay for the character to be that, but it's not okay for the film to never call it out. Maska follows an extremely privileged male teen (Prit Kamani, from Hum Chaar) who's completely unaware of said privilege. On top of that, it's not even close to the Netflix film's biggest fault. But if the title of your movie has no thematic underpinnings to it, it doesn't bode well. Look, it might have been fine if Maska would have been called something else. (We wondered if it would tackle the other use of the term maska, which means to butter someone up, but that doesn't happen either.) There's no reason that bun maska is part of Maska other than the fact that Udhwani clearly loves it. Strangely then, it has no bigger relevance. And it's shared by the lead couple at the very end. It shows up in multiple musical montages, which push the movie into food porn territory. Maska, Netflix's newest film from India - written and directed by feature debutante Neeraj Udhwani, best known for directing over a hundred episodes of the anthology series, Yeh Hai Aashiqui - is fascinated with the Irani café bread-and-butter staple it's named after: bun maska.
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