The Lift Boy comes across as a rather prosaic film, with heard-before dialogues, predictable conversations and lack of humourNot an uplifting affair
Manpriya Singh
Sometimes, a script suffers by sheer virtue of what it could have been rather than what it is. As coming-of-age stories go, trending at number six currently, The Lift Boy, fails to elevate the audience. Rajju, the titular Lift Boy, played by Moin Khan, is the reluctant make-shift lift operator filling in for his father while he recovers from a minor heart attack.
The sort of character we’ve seen around, fourth-time engineering flunk, who gets over the failed status by catching up on a movie and popcorn. “Is he operating a lift or a plane?” comments the maid, taking the very lift, on the arrogant Rajju. Personally he couldn’t agree more. “Why do people even need a lift operator? Why can’t they the press button on their own?” However, what was meaningless finds a new meaning and what was menial becomes modest enough for him to take pride in the lift operator’s orange uniform.
The conversations are obvious and dialogues heard of and the humour, well, not worth mentioning. “My father is a CBI agent but undercover, so I can’t talk much about him,” says Rajju to his friend who obviously doesn’t understand the dignity attached with the labour work of either of his parents, the mother who scrubs utensils and father who operates a lift. The fact that the building-owner, silver haired widow brought up abroad, invites Rajju for a cup of tea, takes him along to Church and for groceries, speaks of a convenient script, but not an imaginative one.
Also that Rajju’s father would be recuperating in a private ward of a super-scrubbed hospital room shows laziness, not logic. In a building comprising six floors, the audience could have metaphorically been taken up and down the journey of several interesting characters that could have been brought into play. But we are introduced to a husband whose wife demands diamonds; a Princess Kapoor (Aneesha Shah), who is miserable because of her mother’s unfulfilled dreams of being an actress. Small talk often unfolding in any lift that probably says more than lengthy conversations, but we are spared the insightful peep into human psychology that could have been factored into both the conversations and characters. Even with plenty of time, there’s plenty to watch as well; The Lift Boy can neatly be stacked in the lower most section of the watch-list.
manpriya@tribunemail.com
