Helicopter Eela is an uncomfortable film to sit through. Even the title feels like it’s already making excuses for the woman at the centre of it. Pradeep Sarkar’s mother-son comedy-drama is pitched as something light and warm, with a dose of ’90s Indipop nostalgia. What arrives is a clumsy, thin, and strangely empty film that keeps pointing at ideas about parenting and second chances without ever really dramatising them.
It’s built around Kajol, and it never quite lets her stop looking like Kajol. She plays Eela, a once-aspiring singer who becomes a loud, overbearing single mother. She’s dressed and made up like she’s about to walk onto a set whether she’s packing tiffins or sitting in a college library. The polish stays intact even when the story wants us to believe she’s exhausted or vulnerable. The flashbacks don’t sell the past either.
When she and her boyfriend stop at Rhythm House and she picks up cassette tapes with exaggerated wonder, it doesn’t feel like someone remembering an era. It feels staged. After he walks out, she drops her music career to raise their son Vivan (Riddhi Sen) and starts a home tiffin service. Helicopter Eela treats this as a noble sacrifice, but it never shows what that choice actually does to her. We’re simply told she gave everything up and then expected to move on.
The mother-son relationship is where the film really struggles. Eela keeps fishing for “I love you” from her college-going son, and the script leans so hard on the word “Mumma” that it starts to sound like a nervous habit. Vivan already looks and acts older than a teenager, and next to his mother’s carefully maintained appearance, the pairing often feels off. There’s an awkwardness between them that Helicopter Eela either doesn’t notice or doesn’t want to deal with.
Kajol has played this kind of loud mother before, most clearly in Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, but the affection that made that work is mostly missing here. The volume is still present. The warmth is not. When she joins Vivan’s college to keep an eye on him, echoing the setup in Nil Battey Sannata. the film doesn’t do much with it. There’s no real interest in the embarrassment or the generational friction. She just stays loud and fussy about her dabbas while everyone around her mostly tolerates her.
Eela’s bigger decisions never feel earned. Giving up her career after her husband leaves is presented as pure sacrifice, yet the writers barely explore why she does it or how it changes her. Years later, when she’s offered a chance to record again and blurts out “Main gaaongi, gaaongi, gaaongi, gaaongi!”, it feels more like a performance than a real breaking point. The enthusiasm is loud, but it doesn’t land as something that has been building. The eventual return to the stage is meant to feel like a triumph, yet Helicopter Eela hasn’t built the emotional ground for it. Vivan both resents her hovering and admires her talent, but their arguments about space stay obvious and unresolved.
The supporting pieces don’t fill the gaps. The mother-in-law stays oddly detached through most of the family chaos. Neha Dhupia’s character mainly exists to push Eela back toward music. Amit Trivedi’s songs, which should have mattered in a story about a singer who moved to Bombay chasing a career, are mostly forgettable. The reworked “Ruk Ruk Ruk” lacks the spark of the original, and even the better tracks don’t really connect to what’s happening. Lines about Vivan’s mother trending on Twitter treat social media as a joke rather than anything the characters actually feel.
Once in a while Kajol goes quiet and something more human comes through. Those are the best moments in Helicopter Eela, and they make the rest of it look more forced. Helicopter Eela keeps its star polished and its ideas thin. It never quite becomes the comedy about overbearing parents, the drama about a woman finding her way back, or the musical it keeps hinting at. From the director of Parineeta, that feels especially disappointing. The pieces were there for something sharper, but the film never commits to them.
Rating: ★ 1½
Helicopter Eela is now streaming on Hotstar.
