Rahul Desai
It’s never a good sign when pre-release interviews are awash with terms like “massy,” “frontbencher,” “slapstick,” “not woke,” “leave brains at home” and “pure entertainer”.
Director Raaj Shaandilyaa making a 133-minute-long gag reel was imminent. The threat of an inane and witless assembly of cultural appropriation puns parading as a Nineties’ David Dhawan picture was looming large.
Pari’s(Ananya Panday) angry father sets Karam(Ayushmann Khurranna) some perfectly sane conditions to earn her hand in marriage: Pay off his dad Jagjit’s (Annu Kapoor) loans, boost bank account, get a job, in no particular order.
Sakina’s adopted brother (Rajpal Yadav); a grandfather (Asrani) who pops it after seeing Pooja urinating from a balcony; a thrice-married aunt (Seema Pahwa) who falls for Karam.
There’s no end to the mistaken-identity jokes, the “Suniel Shetty or Shilpa Shetty?” gender puns, the cringey Khurrana monologues (“love is love, man” he tells a gay character), and a general disdain for commercial storytelling.
It’s sad that this has to be spelt out in 2023 – it’s hard to not notice that the actors and film-makers are actually mocking the ‘types’ they play. They’re punching down on people in the name of tier-three fun.