Mubarakan: Congrats for a rollicking comdey
Cast: Anil Kapoor, Arjun Kapoor, Ileana D’Cruz, Athiya Shetty, Neha Sharma
Rate : 8/10
It’s a rollicking, largely Punjabi, comedy which comes clean on all counts. There are the peg-sheg one-liners that you expect from a gathering of multi-hued sardars, and there are some witty ones too, that you don’t.
But director Anees Bazmee gives you a non-stop roller-coaster of a London-to-Chandigarh achaari family entertainer, packed with Punjab di mitti de Punjab de well-meaning puttars having a rollicking wedding feud between a praa and a good old bebbey in a hilarious comedy of errors.
Mubarakan is one of those few slapstick comedies that do not falter till the very end despite being spread over a more than two-hour span. Most laughter films coming out of the Bollywood stock fail the challenge and drizzle out with a tedious over-the-top mostly un-comic episodic existence.
Bazmee has made his reputation with nonsensical but highly entertaining movies like No Entry, Welcome and Singh is King. In this one, he gets together with his writers Rupinder Chahal and Balwinder Singh Janjua to give you a hearty monsoon laugh with distinctly Punjabi humour and sardar jokes like “Kya iss baar Christmas 25 ko hai?” There are many such which are scripted to the T to make you stay and enjoy.
Anil Kapoor as the first-time sardar on screen, is the centrepiece and brings his vintage histrionics to the show as the punching bag between an always about-to-explode veerji and a wholly London di Punjabi paindhji played to perfection by a vintage Ratna Pathak Shah. From a convincing role as a middle-aged but libidinous widow in Lipstick Under My Burqa to the garrulous sister in this one, she is the tops.
As for Arjun Kapoor, he is obviously out to have a time of his life here playing Charan and Karan in a double role that engages you with all the song, dance and drama. Separated at birth after an accident in which their parents die, these twins are brought up by their late father’spraa and bebbey in Chandigarh & London respectively.
Arjun is good to go for both ambiences and does well to tag you along with his life and times, as a God-fearing sardar in love with a Muslim woman and then with a pucca Punjabi kudi in London, and the other a dil-phenk one out to live it up as a Londoner, Kapoor is an awesome casting by Bazmee.
Other than these, there are all shades of sardars doing justice to the film. From the polished, rich one in Rahul Dev, to the highly volatile one in Pavan Malhotra, to the all-in-one in Anil Kapoor, to the Wahe Guru-daddy-fearing one in Arjun Kapoor, Bazmee has tapped the pulse of a regular Punjabi household with some amount of solid research.
The only miscasting is Illeana D’ Cruz who, despite all the Patiala salwar-kurtas, looks too anglicised to play the Sikh girl Sweety. Athiya Shetty as the other Punjaban named Binkle does not have much of a role other than look good for her next venture.
All said, it’s a complete package with chartbuster songs (Hawa Hawa by Mika and Prakriti Kakar, Goggle by the innately gifted Amaal Malik & Jat Jaguar by Vishal Dadlani and Apeksha Dandekar), totally hilarious dialogues by Rajesh Chawla and the wholesome direction by Bazmee.
A must watch, must roll with laughter film, this one!
Published in Sunday Pioneer, 30 July, 2017