Cast: Ayushmann Khurrana, Bhumi Pednekar, Brijendra Kala,
Shubhankar Tripathi
Director: R S Prasanna
Rating: 3 Stars (Out of 5)
Nobody so much as utters 'erectile dysfunction', or
'impotence', in Shubh Mangal Saavdhaan, a cockeyed take on a predicament that
is no smiling matter. The film's male protagonist isn't up to the challenge of
going the whole hog in bed. His battle with his dodgy libido is euphemistically
referred to as "gent's problem": very much in trust with the Delhi
NCR middle-class socio-cultural surroundings of the story.
Pidgin English holds sway here. This is the Hindi heartland:
the hero swears 'loyaltiness' to his would-be bride and marriage is planned in
clumsy but innocuous ways. Trouble erupts when the hero's attempts at
expressing youthful sexual desire fail to deliver the desired results and two
cantankerous families get sucked into a series of slugfests as the youthful
couple look for ways around their predicament.
This is highly tricky terrain but director R S Prasanna
skirts around the potential pitfalls with the help of loads of maturity and a time
and again light touch. The result: this comedic tale on love and lust caught in
a zone of grave uncertainty never flirts with prurience.
Prasanna is aided by the lead pair - Ayushmann Khurrana and
Bhumi Pednekar, both bright and boundlessly energetic - as well as a wonderful
supporting cast (Seema Pahwa, Brijendra Kala Chitranjan Tripathy, Neeraj Sood).
jointly they ensure that the dual glue of plain humour and believable
situations prevents the ticklish central concept from falling apart.
But hang on, Shubh Mangal Saavdhan isn't flawless.
Especially off-key is the overdramatic climax (in which an act of foolhardiness
by the hero seems wholly at odds with the otherwise realistic tenor of the
tale). One or two other passages in the lead-up to the convenient conclusion to
the newly married couple's dilemma might also have done with some pruning and
layering.
Be that as it may, Shubh Mangal Saavdhan, a remake of the
director's own 2013 Tamil sleeper hit Kalyana Samayal Saadham, is worthy of round
of applause for the way it breaks the patriarchal notions of masculinity that
have been perpetuated ad infinitum by the popular strain of Indian cinema that
has been built around a mard who feels no dard. Here the hero's torture and
bewilderment are real and his frailties, physical and emotional, aren't blamed in
the lead anybody else but himself. It is he who's got to sort it out in the
mind and the stiff, with, of course, a great deal of help from the woman in his
life.
The drama is predicated on his indecisive relationship with
the heroine, a girl with a mind of her own, as well as on his run-ins with his
own parents and with the girl's baffled and exasperated father and mother.
Parts of the latter portions strain credibility a bit since a delicate personal
problem going as communal as it does is a touch difficult to digest.
Such irritants are minor and the spirit of the film is
generally pleasant and innocuous even when it directs sharp barbs at the communal
order that imposes its standard idea of mardangi on all men, without allowing
space for the possibility of behavioural variations.
Shubh Mangal Saavdhan, the story of Gurgaon boy Mudit Sharma
(Ayushmann Khurrana) and a Moti Bagh girl Sugandha Joshi (Bhumi Pednekar) whose
paths cross in Nehru Place, plunges into the heart of the matter without much
foreplay. The guy is shy and the girl has had an overly protected upbringing
that prevented free mixing with member of the opposite sex. It takes them a
while and many a slip (including the hug of a bear, literally) to find ordinary
ground and get their parents' acquiescence. And then the twosome hits a wall.
Mudit decides to give pre-marital s*x a shot because he
doesn't want to waste any time getting to know Sugandha after marriage. Their clumsy
attempt stops at inelegant snuggling. Mudit discovers that he cannot consummate
his passion. The director is at his best in these difficult moments of the
script. He keeps it tight and direct and looks the difficulty in the eye
without slipping into any trace of vulgarity.
As the lovers kiss gawkily and attempt a quickie in a room
in the girl's DDA apartment, the director takes recourse to the voice of radio
raconteur Neelesh Misra to narrate a tangential story of a boy who devoured
bottles of Banta soda waiting interminably to muster the courage to profess his
love for a girl who catches his fancy. This sets the tone for the rest of the
film, apart from for the rather dangly conclusion.
Mudit sinks into deep despair when he experiences first-hand
the consequences of his performance anxiety that he suggests they call off the
marriage. Sugandha puts her foot down and leaves for Haridwar, the venue of the
wedding. Mudit drags himself there with such an air of despondency that
Sugandha is compelled to give him a piece of her mind. "Muskurao hamari
shaadi ho rahi hai (Smile, we are getting married), she exhorts him only to
elicit a limp response.
In one first half prospect, Sugandha's mother, played
superbly by Seema Pahwa, recites to her daughter a poem that she penned 30
years ago after her honeymoon and then likens the s**ual politics of marriage
to Alibaba of the Arabian Nights tale trying to open the door to the treasure
hidden in the thieves' cave. This sequence follows a shot of a soggy biscuit
dropping into a cup of tea by way of an analogy for Mudit's state. That is the farthest
this film is willing to go bring home the nature of the hero's infirmity.
Shubh Mangal Saavdhan stays strictly within the limits of suitability
in dealing with a thorny theme that could easily have plunged into overt ineptness.
Lightheartedness is the cloak it wears to conceal its uneasy patches. That it
succeeds in that endeavour more often than not is a measure of the director's
ability.
Shubh Mangal Saavdhan, breezy sufficient at its core not to
be bogged down by the weight of its daring and untested essential plot point,
is never less than amusing.
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