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Release date:
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September 1, 2017
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Director:
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R.S. Prasanna
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Cast:
Language:
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Bhumi Pednekar, Ayushmann
Khurrana, Seema Pahwa, Neeraj Sood, Supriya Shukla, Chittaranjan Tripathy, Brijendra
Kala, Anshul Chauhan
Hindi
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One of Shubh Mangal Saavdhan’s achievements is
that although, on the face of it, it visits territory familiar to both its lead
stars – Bhumi Pednekar and Ayushmann Khurrana – it has its own distinct
identity.
Khurrana debuted
playing a professional sperm donor in 2012’s Vicky Donor in which Shoojit Sircar did not generate a single icky
moment from a subject that a lesser director might have taken down an icky
road. The actor has been mastering the art of playing a repressed middle-class boy
through 2015’s sleeper hit Dum Laga Ke Haisha
– which happened to be the sprightly Pednekar’s maiden film – and Bareilly Ki Barfi, which was released a
fortnight back. Vicky Donor dealt with
intimate bodily concerns,
so do Shubh Mangal Saavdhan (SMS) and Pednekar’s second film, Toilet: Ek Prem Katha, which too is currently
in theatres. She too has acquired her own M.A. in
playing feisty women in a conservative milieu through her three films.
Add to this the
fact that Seema Pahwa, who plays the heroine’s mother here is also the
heroine’s mom in Bareilly Ki Barfi,
and it is easy to see how SMS might
have acquired a been-there-seen-that feel. Like I said, it is to the director
and cast’s credit that they give their film a stamp of individuality in so many
ways, that five minutes into its running time, fresh memories of toilets and barfis fly out of the window.
SMS is the story of an engaged couple in the National
Capital Region who learn that the boy suffers from erectile dysfunction (ED). While
the first half is devoted to how Mudit and Sugandha discover the problem in the
months leading up to their wedding, the second is about the search for a
solution and its effect on their relationship.
That an Indian
storyteller might consider ED an issue because it would deny a woman sexual
pleasure in her marriage – and not merely because of the social pressure she
will inevitably face to beget heirs carrying forward her husband’s family line –
is reason enough to sit up and take notice. That he wants
us to view sex as a means to express love and
affection between the partners involved, and not merely as a function performed
to make babies (or for that matter, not as an instrument of physical
satisfaction alone), is such an interesting turn of events.
Even when the
conservatism of Mudit’s family threatens to tear them apart, it is evident that
writer-director R.S. Prasanna sees Sugandha and Mudit as equal partners. Even
though SMS is an out-and-out comedy, it is
clear that Prasanna does not consider their intimacy a frivolous pursuit. Frankly, this man’s refreshingly different attitude to
life is spelt out from the opening moment of the film when SMS gives us something you rarely ever get in commercial Indian
cinema: a female voiceover and the introduction of the heroine before the hero.
SMS is a remake of the Tamil film
Kalyana Samayal Saadham which starred Lekha Washington and Prasanna. The
original and SMS are both directed by
R.S. Prasanna. He also wrote the original. The screenplay and dialogues for the
Hindi film have been written by Hitesh Kewalya who manages to neatly capture
the environment in which the film is set while also flirting with sexual
innuendo at places without ever getting crude.
The first half of SMS is a complete riot, yet manages to evoke stirring
passages of emotion between the two leads. From their initial meeting, to the
manner in which they get past the hurdles involved in courtship in a society
where a direct and open expression of interest in a person of the opposite sex
is frowned upon, a woman is expected never to make the first move and a decent
man must therefore find ways to approach a woman he likes without being a
stalker or a lech; from their shy shot at having sex one night when they get
her house all to themselves, to Sugandha’s mother’s effort to drive home the
virtues of virginity to her daughter, and the bride’s calculating yet
affectionate chachu, everything is designed
to have viewers rolling in the aisles with laughter even while driving home the
point it wishes to make. And Prasanna succeeds on both counts.
Pednekar and
Khurrana are so sweet together and separately, that I wanted to reach out and
hug them throughout. She, with less experience, performs as if she was born to live
before the camera. That they are good actors is a given. This film further
serves to establish that they are a shubh
jodi on screen, and could well be our new
Deepti Naval-Farooq Sheikh combination.
In one scene, Mudit tells his
fiancee that he ate “onion” kulchas earlier in the day. In another, he refers to
his “resumé”. I loved how Khurrana mispronounces both words – with seeming
effortlessness – without turning his character into a caricature. I loved
too that the film is not condescending in its gaze on the people of its chosen
setting.
Of the supporting cast, Seema
Pahwa and Neeraj Sood playing Sugandha’s parents get the benefit of the best-written
characters, and return the favour with scintillating
performances.
Though Mudit’s Mum
and Dad are not examined as closely by the screenplay, Supriya Shukla and
Chittaranjan Tripathy too have their sparkling moments. The only other
supporting players who are written with any depth are Sugandha’s eccentric
uncle (played by Brijendra Kala) and her best friend Ginni (Anshul Chauhan) –
both actors are just fantastic.
This being middle
class India where everyone in your extended family and neighbourhood has an
opinion about the most private details of your existence, and where “bachche kab karoge?” (when will you have
children?) is a question people ask even virtual strangers without any qualms,
of course after a point Mudit’s troubles become a talking point in the entire biraadari. When the narrative reaches
this place, it falters, getting carried away with its hyperbole.
(Possible
spoilers ahead)
This is one of the reasons why the
post-interval portion of SMS is much weaker
than its opening half. The other reason is that after a while, the team seems
not entirely sure how to handle the complexities of their theme while
sustaining the humour. At this point, substance gets sacrificed in favour of
absurdity, loudness is used to cover up lack of layering, and an exploration of
the Sugandha-Mudit equation is replaced by frenzied activity on screen. Enter:
a clumsily handled guest appearance by Jimmy Sheirgill, and the insertion of Mudit’s
touchy-feely ex in the picture, the only purpose this irritating creature
serves being to keep us informed that the boy did manage to do it in the past.
(Spoiler
alert ends)
Criminally, too, SMS is casually ignorant in its
discussion on erectile dysfunction, dismissing ED with a wave of the hand as a condition
driven purely by psychology. Performance anxiety is just one of many reasons
that could spark off ED in a man, and it is inexcusable that a purportedly
sincere film would spread further falsehoods about a subject that is already so
mired in misinformation in this country.
The standard reaction to such criticism
is to say, “C’mon yaar, this is not a documentary, it is a fiction feature.”
Yes, yaaaaar, but A Beautiful Mind and Rain Man were not documentaries, yet they gave us deep insights
into schizophrenia and autism respectively. And before anyone responds further
with, “C’mon yaar, but SMS is a
comedy,” let me add, yaaaaar, that I can recall scene after scene in Rain Man that were comical, yet the film
was not uninformed.
SMS’ lacunae though, surface only in
the second half, by which time the mood is so firmly set, that half the battle
has been won. Among the many things to recommend this film are the lightness of
touch in the songs (written and composed by Tanishk-Vayu) and in DoP Anuj
Rakesh Dhawan’s take on the NCR and Haridwar sans mandatory visits to famous
landmarks – what Dhawan gives us instead, for the most part, are narrow streets
in congested residential colonies, crowded public roads, small middle-class
homes and a sparing use of long shots while he is at it, which goes well with
the film’s endearing lack of pretensions to grandeur or a large scale. (For the
record, FYI, SMS was shot on location
in Delhi, Gurgaon, Haridwar, Rishikesh and Mumbai, in addition to a Mumbai
studio.)
Shubh
Mangal Saavdhan then
is super-fun till it gets superficial. It is, to borrow the tagline of another
film now in theatres, sundar, susheel and risky in its first half,
flails about in the second, but remains entertaining overall. Handle it with
care and alertness.
Rating
(out of five stars): **1/2
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CBFC Rating (India):
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UA
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Running time:
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105 minutes 25 seconds
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This
review has also been published on Firstpost:
Poster
courtesy:
