Mad Sad and Bad

WHAT WERE they thinking with that title? Few critics will, noting the variable quality of this British near-comedy, resist the temptation to scatter those adjectives about their reviews, but we’ll do our best to take the high ground.

Avie Luthra's low-budget film follows three Asian siblings as they mope, squabble and fornicate their way about an oddly under- populated city. Hardeep (Zubin Varla) is an amoral psychoanalyst with a near-psychotic tendency towards megalomania. Atul ( EastEnders' Nitin Ganatra) works as a scriptwriter for bad sitcoms, but has a desire to expand his range. Rashmi (Meera Syal) labours beneath all the archetypal clichés of the frustrated movie spinster: bad coat, arms that constantly fold, unstable relationship with mother.

Narrated from beyond the grave by that recently deceased matriarch, the picture finds Hardeep pressing himself creepily on Atul’s girlfriend when she visits him as a patient, Rashmi experimenting disastrously with blind dates, and Atul embarking unamusingly on an opera about cheese.

Though passably acted and competently shot, the film is saddled with a script that – as is so often the case in current British comedy – needs a great deal more development before it is fit to be seen out in public. Mad Sad and Badrejoices in unexplained narrative quirks and trusts that eccentric behaviour will stand in for genuine drama. People say things people never say and do things people never do.

At the close, when the cheese opera finally debuts, someone is foolish enough to ask whether “this is so bad it’s good”. No. It’s not that bad. It’s not that good either. It is a bit mad though.

Oh sorry. We promised not to do that.

Directed by Avie Luthra. Starring Meera Syal, Nitin Ganatra, Zubin Varla, Andrea Riseborough TBC cert, Screen, Dublin, 90 min