REVIEW 763: JAI MUMMY DI

Release date:	January 17, 2020
Director:	Navjot Gulati
Cast:	Sunny Singh, Sonnalli Seygall, Supriya Pathak Kapoor, Poonam Dhillon, Alok Nath
Language:	Hindi

If you are a fan of director Luv Ranjan’s brand of visceral misogyny in Pyaar Ka Punchnama 1 and 2 and Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety, and that is what you are hoping to get in Jai Mummy Di, then you will be disappointed. This new film, despite being co-produced by Ranjan, displays a surprising lack of animosity towards women.

If you saw the trailer of Jai Mummy Di, were intrigued by the hint of a long-buried lesbian romance and were hoping to see a film on this still taboo subject, then too you will be disappointed. 

If the pace and sense of humour you spotted in the trailer left you expecting a couple of hours of light-hearted fun, again, disappointment awaits you. 

That is the thing about director Navjot Gulati’s Jai Mummy Di. It is not regressive, not progressive, not anything.

Jai Mummy Di is the story of Pinky Bhalla (Poonam Dhillon) and Laali Khanna (Supriya Pathak Kapoor) who have been sworn enemies for decades. They are neighbours in a north Delhi locality and their mutual antagonism is so strong, that their children – Saanjh Bhalla (Sonnalli Seygall) and Puneet Khanna (Sunny Singh) – dare not reveal to the families that they have been in love since school. When the youngsters realise they cannot live without each other, they set out to find the root cause of the mothers’ hatred which, they are told, dates back to their college days. Back then, their common friend reveals, the two were so thick that they were even rumoured to be girlfriends.

The first half of Jai Mummy Di is certainly mildly funny, but the comedy and the film as a whole fizzle out as it gradually becomes clear that Gulati does not know where to take it. This was also the problem with that earlier film he wrote, 2017’s Running Shaadi starring Taapsee Pannu and Amit Sadh – there was the seed of a good idea there, but it got lost on a road to nowhere.

Once Jai Mummy Di starts going round and round in circles, it becomes limp and purposeless. Dialogues are left hanging, extra seconds hang loose and it begins to feel like an amateur stage production where the actors don’t understand poor timing.

Veterans Pathak Kapoor and Dhillon get to shout and grimace a lot, but for a film that is supposedly centred around their characters, Jai Mummy Di has precious little about them and gives them hardly any screen time in the second half. Sunny Singh and Sonnalli Seygall, both of whom are recognisable from Ranjan’s most famous films, look dapper and deliver competent even if not sparkling performances. Singh needs to work on his dialogue delivery though. In several places in the film I found myself straining my ears to figure out what he had just said because of his tendency to swallow words or shoot them out too fast.

Possibly because the Pyaar Ka Punchnamas gained notoriety for their misogyny, this screenplay tries to compensate with occasional moments of overt feminism. Saanjh demands to know why a woman must follow her husband wherever he goes after marriage, and Puneet does not disagree. When they hear of the possibility that their mothers were once romantically involved with each other, they respond with a complete lack of judgement. But these instances of pointed liberalism add up to nothing when actor Alok Nath surfaces intermittently in the narrative as a hanger on, and it appears that although the man has no particular role to play in this film, he has been placed there as an act of defiance against those who asked why he was cast in Ranjan’s last production De De Pyaar De despite the allegations of rape and harassment that surfaced against him during the Me Too movement in 2018, allegations he responded to with the most bizarre, apathetic non-denial.

His presence is just a distracting irritant. What really kills this film is the supposed big reveal in the end about Laali and Pinky’s intense enmity. It is so poorly conceived and so so ordinary, that you have to wonder why this plain film was ever made. Seriously, why?

Rating (out of 5 stars): 0.5

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	106 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bollywood/jai-mummy-di-movie-review-pyaar-ka-punchnamas-team-returns-with-a-not-regressive-not-progressive-not-anything-film-7918781.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jai_Mummy_Di

FEATURE ON SEXISM IN BOLLYWOOD

Nothing Humourous About It

Despite a marked increase in feminist viewers and activists speaking up against sexist jokes in Hindi films, the truth is that the audience and media continue to have a high tolerance level for patriarchy, misogyny and sexism on screen

In all the thunderous anger and support that Kabir Singh attracted this summer, another star-led Hindi film passed under the radar of most feminist viewers. De De Pyaar De, released just weeks earlier, had Ajay Devgn playing a 50-year-old called Ashish introducing his 26-year-old girlfriend Aisha to his estranged wife Manju (Tabu).

One of the film’s scenes shows Aisha obtusely comparing Manju to a “puraani gaadi” (old car) while Manju likens her to a high-maintenance “nayee gaadi” (new car). This is not the first sexist joke in the film: the morning after their maiden meeting, Aisha sniggers over the possibility that she could have been raped by Ashish when she was passed out – of course she does not call it rape, she cheerily asks why he did not do her when he had the chance, which gives him the perfect moment to slip in a swipe at rape survivors, “I do not give women the opportunity to cry rape using the pretence of having been unconscious as their excuse.”

Perhaps director Akiv Ali’s De De Pyaar De escaped a stormy reaction while Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s Kabir Singh did not because Ali is less overtly virulent in his animosity towards women, wrapping it around a sedate-looking hero who is never shown assaulting women, unlike Kabir. Much of the misogyny in De De Pyaar De is also strategically written into dialogues spoken by the women themselves.

That said, the brouhaha over Vanga’s film may give cheer to north India’s women’s rights activists, but a celebration would be premature as is evident from the box-office success of Kabir Singh and the comparatively muted criticism of De De Pyaar De. Both developments point to the fact that despite a marked increase in demands for accountability from Hindi filmmakers since the anti-rape protests that followed the December 2012 Delhi gangrape, the truth is that the audience and media continue to have a high tolerance level for patriarchy, misogyny, sexism and sexist humour including rape jokes on screen.

After all, the audience that was vociferous about Kabir Singh has been far gentler on Luv Ranjan, co-producer of De De Pyaar De, who has built his entire career on humourising hatred for women in his directorial ventures Pyaar Ka Punchnama (2011), Pyaar Ka Punchnama 2 (2015) and Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety (2018).

Like him, more high-profile directors too have gotten off lightly for trivialising rape in the past decade or so. The critically acclaimed ones among them include Rajkumar Hirani whose 3 Idiots, produced by the equally acclaimed Vidhu Vinod Chopra, featured a long speech in which a character is tricked into repeatedly saying “balaatkaar” (rape) instead of “chamatkaar” (miracle). The scene was positioned as the high point of hilarity in this 2009 blockbuster. In 2007’s Jab We Met directed by Imtiaz Ali, the otherwise likeable Geet (Kareena Kapoor) and Aditya (Shahid Kapoor) casually toss the word “rape” between them in scenes designed to be cute and funny. In Ali’s Rockstar in 2011, when Heer (Nargis Fakhri) and Janardhan (Ranbir Kapoor) exit a shady theatre where they were watching a low-grade film called Junglee Jawani, he chuckles as he says, “If we stayed any longer in the hall, you’d have been raped,” to which she replies with a laugh, “That’s fine, it would have been Junglee Jawani Part 2.”

It may be argued that these three films were released pre-2012, when feminist viewers were less vocal and less Hindi film critics were vehement in their opposition to sexism. The reality though is that those who speak up are still outnumbered by those who support such cinema.  Even the claim that Kabir Singh’s misogyny was largely derided by critics is false – the film got plenty of positive reviews too. In fact, some of the voluble backing that sexist Bollywood has received in recent years is very possibly a backlash against the increasing space for discussions on women’s rights in the news media since 2012.

On the flip side, the very public nature of the post-2012 feminist discourse has bred film personalities who have jumped on to the bandwagon, treating feminism as just another commercially viable formula. During the promotional period of Pink in 2016, Amitabh Bachchan released an open letter to his granddaughters about the challenges they are likely to face as women. “Don’t let anyone make you believe that the length of your skirt is a measure of your character,” he wrote. Yet in 2018, Bachchan’s articulation skills betrayed him when the nation was rocked by protests against the Unnao and Kathua rapes made all the more shocking by the ruling party’s apparent support for the alleged rapists. When asked for a comment about these gruesome crimes during a press conference for another film, this one not on women’s empowerment, the superstar told reporters, “I feel disgusted even talking about it, so don’t rake it up. It’s terrible to even talk about it.”

Bachchan’s selectiveness is greatly overshadowed though by the opportunistic feminism of Akshay Kumar whose films for nearly three decades have been hostile towards women. Kumar discovered sensitivity in the past couple of years, coincidentally after it became clear from the success of various Vidya Balan starrers and Queen that although misogyny remains a hotsell, concern for women sells too. This is a man whose voiceover in the title track of Tees Maar Khan (2010) – sadly, a film directed by a woman – featured the quip, “tawaif ki lootthi izzat ko bachana aur Tees Maar Khan ko qaid karna, dono bekaar hai” (it is pointless to try and prevent the rape of a prostitute or keep Tees Maar Khan imprisoned). This is a star whose character stalked and forcibly kissed the heroine (Sonakshi Sinha) in an extended passage presented as comedy in 2014’s Holiday. In the years since, he has been courting a different off-screen image as a family man, thoughtful father and supportive husband to a tough-as-nails feminist wife, all of which stood him in good stead by the time Toilet: Ek Prem Katha (2017) and Padman (2018) rolled around. In Toilet his character’s love for his wife prompted him to run a campaign for toilets in homes, while in Padman he played a campaigner for menstrual hygiene.

An appearance of caring lends polish to a star’s image that no amount of multi-crore collections with crude comedies can achieve. And that is how it has come about that a star who was once a flag-bearer of misogyny in Bollywood is today the face of a movement to promote the use of sanitary napkins.

This is not to suggest that there is no hope. There are, after all, many more members of the public and media calling out misogyny in Hindi cinema today than in the past. Kabir Singh loyalists have been furious with critics who they believe were silent about the Sonam Kapoor-Dhanush-starrer Raanjhanaa in 2013 yet have lambasted Kabir Singh for what they consider similar content. Raanjhanaa was, without question, deeply regressive, and if there are indeed critics who have displayed double standards in this matter, flowing with the tide as the likes of Akshay Kumar are now doing, then by all means expose them, but the optimistic take on this scenario is that at least some people have evolved between 2013 and 2019 precisely because of the voices that did not stay silent back in 2013.

As with any discussion on social and cultural evolution then, a debate on misogyny, patriarchy and sexist humour in Hindi cinema ends up being a matter of a glass half full and simultaneously half empty. The stupendous success of and parallel backlash against Kabir Singh could either cause Shahid Kapoor and Sandeep Reddy Vanga to dig their heels in further or reconsider their attitudes, but it is almost certain that those speaking up against such horribly backward cinema are bound to increase in numbers. Meanwhile, for the benefit of those yet undecided, or those who feel repelled by Kabir Singh but consider De De Pyaar De harmless fun, it is important to point out that the mindset that prompted an Akiv Ali to have one of his characters equating a middle-aged woman with a “puraani gaadi” while another makes light of a grave matter like consent, is no different from Vanga’s outlook that prompted him to humourise a hero who violates the heroine’s consent, is violent towards her and is rewarded with her love and loyalty.

  

A version of this article was published in The Tribune on August 18, 2019:

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/spectrum/nothing-humourous-about-it/818360.html

Photographs courtesy:

(1)    https://www.facebook.com/DeDePyaarDe/

(2)    https://www.facebook.com/sonutitusweety/

(3)    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tees_Maar_Khan_(2010_film)