Mubarakan movie review: A lolz comedy of bad manners

Cast: Anil Kapoor, Arjun Kapoor, Pawan Malhotra, Ratna Pathak, Rahul Dev, Ileana D’Cruz, Athiya Shetty, Neha Sharma
Director: Anees Bazmee

 

If someone were to go around conducting a community-wise survey to unearth the reasons why families do pakki-kutti with their loved ones, Punjabis would stand tall for having the most epic quarrels and enmity over the most trivial things. Surveyors would also find that most of these tiffs are located in some matrimonial scenario. I remember a wedding where all the baratis were mighty miffed and blessing the innocent, gori-chitti, new-new bahu with such dripping scorn that one would have thought she had tiptoed into their rooms at night and cut of all straps of all bras. But no. The reason was that the new bahu’s family had served rajma twice to the baratis, the boys’ side — once on arrival, and once the next afternoon. They might as well have collected every bra and underwear that the baratis possessed, made a bonfire and made the bride do laavan-pheras around it in a black bra-panty. I don’t know who handed the results of one such survey to Anees Bazmee, but his Mubarakan could not have been more true or more lunatic and funny. There’s prerequisite though, to enjoying Mubarakan. If you don’t get Punjabi, I mean their language-shanguage and habits-vabits, you’ll wonder why some people in the hall are guffawing so hard that the entire row is shaking. If you do, then, well, balle-balle and shawa-shawa.

One day in England, in a tragic accident, one brother (Sanjay Kapoor) dies along with his wife, leaving his two judwa sons to his younger brother, Kartar Singh (Anil Kapoor). But bachelor Kartar can’t handle two infants, so he hands one to his UK-resident sister Jeeto (Ratna Pathak), and packs off the other to his brother Baldev (Pawan Malhotra) in Punjab. Upon becoming gabru-jawans, cut-Surd Karan (UK-based Arjun Kapoor) and pagri-walla Charan (Punjab-dwelling Arjun Kapoor) find themselves girlfriends. Karan loves Sweety Gill (Ileana D’Cruz), and Charan loves Nafisa Ali Khan (Neha Sharma), but neither has the jigra to tell their parents. Obvo, Jeeto has an encounter with Sweety in true SRK-Amrish Puri style (DDLJ), and Baldev, well, since he won’t serve anything Mughlai at his posh Purani Haveli dhaba, he’s not likely to allow Charan to bring home Razia Sultan. Jeeto decides that the very rich Sandhu saab’s (Rahul Dev) daughter Binkle (Athiya Shetty) will marry Karan. But chalu Karan pushes Charan. Bechara Charan confides in Kartar about g’friend Nafisa, and chachu throws a druggie twist in the midst. This leads to the film’s big, blistering syappa!

Anees Bazmee’s Mubarakan, written by Balwinder Singh Janjua and Gurmmeet Singh, is a very entertaining, enjoyable comedy of bad manners. It is politically incorrect and completely in control of its screwball plot, gags, funny asides, mental lines and sparkling characters. In Mubarakan’s England, as was the case in Australia in Bazmee’s Singh Is Kinng (2011), the goras exist only to service the Punjabis. There’s poor Jolly, who keeps getting slapped, one druggie, some velle valets and neighbours without a life. But the film’s strength really lies in the fact that each scene, exchange, character has a strong Punjabi flavour. There’s the shaadi ka card which looks like a 2-kg mithai box, Baldev using gargles to express his anger, a father of a bride whose only purpose in life is to hold on to his credit card till it’s needed. The plot uses encounters between the squabbling siblings and Kartar’s idiotic schemes to keep twisting the silly, tense situation tighter and tighter. Disaster — wrong boy marrying the wrong girl — is imminent all the time and attempts to avert it only makes it spiral out of everybody’s control till, in the end, some slaps are exchanged. That gives everyone a lot of maan ki shaanti and reason for a big jhappi. The dialogues, by Rajesh Chawla, are all insult-laden sentences. Whether may be the issue or occasion, no chance is spared to abuse or offend someone.