Cinemaah

That Gents’ Problem

RS Prasanna’s Shubh Mangal Saavdhan is a Hindi remake of the Tamil hit Kalyana Samayal Saadham, but its antecedents go back to Bill Naugton’s 1963 play All In Good Time, adapted into a 2007 play Rafta Rafta by Ayub Khan-Din.

At the core of it is what the film’s male lead refers to as “gents’ problem.”  Mudit (Ayushmaan Khurrana) falls in love with Sugandha (Bhumi Pednekar) and after some mild stalking and an online proposal, the two get engaged.

What is charming about the film --set in Delhi—and its characters is their ordinariness.  And they expect nothing but an mundane life.  Sugandha is more assertive of the two and at one point admits that Mudit was the only one who liked her, while the other boys were chasing glamorous girls.

Then, Mudit discovers his “gents’ problem” and for a while his desperate attempts (goaded by two friends) to deal with it, and Sugandha’s effort (goaded by her friend and a blue film) to seduce him are funny. Soon, as it happens in Indian families, everybody comes to know about the problem, and Mudit is mortified.

But it is clear by the time the second half arrives, and everybody shifts to Haridwar for the wedding, that the director has painted himself into a corner. The film is bold enough to take up the subject of “performance anxiety” but a doctor dismisses it as a trifle, the implication being that Mudit is making much ado about nothing. But in India, the problem of impotence would affect a woman more, because the delay is producing a child would be blamed on her.

Sugandha’s father (Neeraj Sood) wants her to call off the wedding, while Mudit’s father (Chittaranjan Tripathy) refuses to believe his son is deficient in any way. The mothers (Seema Bhargava, Supriya Shukla) hover helplessly. The connection of masculinity with sexual prowess is questioned in the film, but sadly also endorsed.

Still, it is good to see the middle-class reclaim its place in mainstream films, and to see a female lead who is not coy. Khurrana (it was brave of him to do this role) and Pednekar are like the new Amol Palekar and Zarina Wahab who, for a short while, made the ordinary acceptable at the box-office.

Rogue's Gallery

  

The talk of Emergency tagged on to the promotion of Baadshaho makes it sound like it has a political statement built in, but it was probably because Milan Luthria wanted a period before cell phones and GPS.  Also, if a heist is carried out against a ‘bad’ government, it makes the crime somewhat legit, and the heroes not unscrupulous thieves.

Since it is a throwback to the Seventies, it also has some of the elements of cinema of that era, like swaggering, quip-a-minute characters and an illogical masala plot. The Emergency is limited to a Sanjay Gandhi-like character who orders the army to confiscate the hidden treasure of Princess Gitanjali (Ileana D’Cruz), because she turned him down. She is thrown into jail, where she spends several days without crumpling her chiffon sari or mussing her make-up. The Seventies are invoked by characters wearing bell-bottoms and driving an Ambassador, otherwise the period is irrelevant.

Gitanjali’s loyal bodyguard and lover Bhawani (Ajay Devgan) promises to steal her gold for her, getting skirt-chaser Dalia (Emraan Hashmi), lock-picker Guruji (Sanjay Mishra) and Gitanjali’s friend Sanjana (Esha Gupta) to help. Trying to stop the on-the-road heist is army man Sehar (Vidyut Jammwal), who is introduced sitting in a train compartment in his briefs, for no reason but that he has a show-off body.

For a caper, it’s not much fun, the music is forgettable and the climax ridiculous. There are just a few enjoyable scenes—the actual capture of the truck carrying the booty being one of them; the rest is all tosh.  Ajay Devgan plays his usual strong-silent type, Emraan Hashmi gets a sexy song with Sunny Leone, and Sanjay Mishra does the heavy lifting. Esha Gupta is included just to add a little more glamour. It would have been interesting to see them playing against type, but this is not that kind of film.