Helicopter Eela

Helicopter Eela is a 2018 Indian Hindi-language comedy-drama film directed by Pradeep Sarkar. It features Kajol in the lead role as an aspiring singer and single mother Helicopter parent and is written by Mitesh Shah and Anand Gandhi. It is based on the Gujarati play Beta, Kaagdo, written by Anand Gandhi.

Pre-production of the film began in January 2017, and principal photography commenced from 24 January 2018. It was released on 12 October 2018.

Plot
Eela, a single mother rejoins her college to complete her education after 22 years. In the flashback, it is shown that she is an upcoming, partially-famous model/singer, who records songs written by her boyfriend Arun. When she is recording for a career-breaking song for a Mahesh Bhatt project, the project gets cancelled indefinitely. So she and her boyfriend decide to get married. After few months it is shown that she gives birth to a boy named Vivan. While seeing their family tree, Eela and Arun realise that many male members of Arun's family died in their late 30s, which drives Arun crazy as he is also in his late 30s. So he finally decides to leave Eela and Vivan to pursue his own dreams as it might be his final years. Afterwards, Arun dies. Eela, now a single mom, is very over protective about Vivan. She keeps meddling in Vivan's life continuously and she finally joins the same college as Vivan to complete her studies. One day suddenly Arun comes back, but he goes out as soon he realizes that Eela and Vivan don't need him. Eela's involvement in Vivan's life becomes so much that Vivan decides to leave his house to give some space to Eela and to find her own identity. Eela joins a college theatre club, and starts singing again. During the annual singing competition she is not allowed to sing because of her age and past singing profession. But Vivaan encourages her to sing on the stage and they together give a remarkable performance. In the credits, it is shown that she has resumed her singing finding herself after many years.

Cast

 * Kajol as Eela Raiturkar, Vivan's mother, Arun's wife
 * Riddhi Sen as Vivan Raiturkar, Arun and Eela's son
 * Rashi Mal as Nikita
 * Tota Roy Chowdhury as Arun Raiturkar, Eela's husband, Vivan’s father
 * Neha Dhupia as Padma
 * Shataf Figar as Madhavi Bhogat
 * Muskan Bamne as Deepthi
 * Zakir Hussain as Principal of college
 * Atul Kulkarni as Prime Minister
 * Imran Khan in cameo appearance as himself
 * Anu Malik in cameo appearance as himself
 * Swarnalekha Gupta as Alisha Chinai
 * Ila Arun in cameo appearance as herself
 * Baba Sehgal in cameo appearance as himself
 * Mahesh Bhatt in cameo appearance as himself
 * Shaan in cameo appearance as himself
 * Amitabh Bachchan in cameo appearance
 * R J Alok as Chemistry Professor

Marketing and promotion
The first trailer of the movie was released on 5 August 2018 having an initial release date as 7 September 2018. But later, the movie release date was postponed to 12 October 2018.

Soundtrack
The background score and two originals of the film is composed by Daniel B.George and other songs are composed by Amit Trivedi and Raghav Sachar. The lyrics are written by Swanand Kirkire, Asma Nabeel and Shyam Anuragi (noted). The first song "Mumma Ki Parchai" was released on 13 August 2018. The second song "Yaadon Ki Almari" was released on 20 August 2018. The song of the film, "Ruk Ruk Ruk Arre Baba Ruk" from the 1994 film Vijaypath originally sung by Alisha Chinai and composed by Anu Malik has been recreated for this film by Raghav Sachar in the voice of Palomi Ghosh.

Reception
Helicopter Eela received mixed reviews from the audience and critics. Kajol and Riddhi Sen received praises for their performances.