What I loved most: Nothing much...

What I really hated: Directing, storyline, (over)acting, almost everything I guess....

I know this movie is not my cup of tea from the trailer but the free tickets that I got landed me into the cinema hall and it was a 2 hours of torture for me. Despite the regional colloboration between India, Indonesia and Malaysia, Diva fails to impress me. A musical film, the story revolves around Kartika (Ning Baizura in a mature than her look role), an international diva who returned to her homeland Malaysia for good. She also wish to reconcile with her mother Ibu Niken (Fauziah Nawi - why she accepted the role still puzzling me..) after she ran away form home to pursue her musical career. At the advise of her childhood sweetheart Arman (Indonesia's Jeremy Thomas, initially I thought he is an Indian actor until he opened his mouth and come out with thick Indonesian accent), to make amend with her mother Kartika agreed to run the musical school founded by her late father and be the mentor to young singers. She then formed a quartet call Jiwa that is made up of Idid (Adam AF), Mera (Jessica Iskandar), Eja (Balkisyh Semundurkhan) and Jay (Awal Ashaari). However, the success of their singles made Jiwa turns away from Kartika and deserted her on the eve of a main concert that Kartika hopes would reconcile her and her mother. The opening scene of the movie at the airport was quite promising but as the story develops, I started to hate the movie. Though the storyline is simple, it wasn't develop well with lopholes and flaws here and there. Even the script was also not well written. Some of the scenes are quite illogical and pretentious, such as when Ibu Niken lighting a candle in broad day light and when Mera was singing at her goreng pisang stall and ignoring the customer (Kartika) who was standing in front of her (it would be a better scene if Mera was shown singing while turning her back at Kartika instead, there will be an element of suprise to the audience as well ). The acting of Balkisyh, Pushpa Narayan (as a journalist) and AC Mizal (Rudy, driver to Kartika) are quite over acting and over the top, at time irritating. Even the product placements and promotion of the main sponsor Hotlink was done distastefully - the worst product promotion that I have seen in recent local movies (Celcom was promoted way better in Sumolah & Waris Jari Hantu). Maybe because of Indian director Sharad Sharan at the helm, Diva ended up like a typical Bollywood movie with song and dance sequence throughtout the movie. The only consolation that I got from the movie is the cameo role for the late Hani Mokhsin in probably his last's film role. This film is a failure of 3 nations colloboration I would say, a fallen Diva.