It’s a scathing comment on the deplorable state of Hindi films that it’s not the excitement of a movie but its ticket price that has become the biggest crowd-puller. Capping it at ₹99 has emerged as the new quick fix. First, it was Brahmastra: Part One—Shiva (2022), then Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya earlier this year, and now Mr & Mrs Mahi. The excuse this time is Cinema Lovers Day.
Sharan Sharma’s second directorial feature after his impressive 2020 debut Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl is the story of how a failed, frustrated batter uses his doe-eyed wife—a natural hitter—to fulfil his unrealised quest for fame and respect. Success and celebrity come knocking, but at her door and not much to his chagrin.
Written by Sharma and Nikhil Mehrotra, Mr & Mrs Mahi will remind you of several films—Patiala House (2011), London Dreams (2009), even
Ghoomer (2023)—but at its core, it’s a mishmash of Abhimaan (1973) and A Star is Born (1976). The tragedy, however, is that it’s the most forgettable of them all.
For some unknowable reason, the film is set in Jaipur. As a native of the magnificent desert capital, I’ve never seen a more unimaginative, incurious depiction of it on celluloid. Anay Goswamy’s camera takes all the stock locations and throws them to dust. No, he errs worse; he reduces them to dead backdrops. As part of her training, Mahendra (Rajkummar Rao) makes his wife Mahima (Janhvi Kapoor) run through the walled city, with the terracotta shops neatly lined on both sides. Before the wedding, he meets her for an important chat at a venue that overlooks the Hawa Mahal. His father’s sports equipment store is at Paach Batti. A childhood flashback reminds him of a simpler time when he played cricket only for joy. As his friends hoist him, guess which tourist attraction sits stately behind? Amber Fort.
So woebegone, sterile is the film’s treatment of its setting; it made me think of every movie that has worked wonders with its geography and used it as an effective, transformative narrative tool to carve a singular visual language. Band Baaja Baaraat (2010),
Piku (2015), October (2018),
Jaane Jaan (2023), Life in a Metro (2007), Aarya (which was also based in Jaipur), and most recently,
All We Imagine As Light, are fantastic examples of how subversive, inventive, malleable reimagining of a location can elevate storytelling in ways both haunting and hypnotic.
But I digress. At 138 minutes, Mr & Mrs Mahi had the potential to be a lot more. It has several potent ideas susurrating right under its surface—how unappreciative, morale-sucking, dismissive fathers can cause irreversible damage and identity crisis (
Tamasha, Animal instantly come to mind). How it isn’t always easy to watch from the sidelines someone close soar, the joy of having a partner who shares your obsession with something just as passionately and it becoming the foundation of your relationship, and the constant clash of egos and changing realities in a marriage.
However, Mr & Mrs Mahi squanders it all. It’s neither a riveting sports drama nor an engaging romance. The conflicts feel manufactured, the victories easy, the life lessons too limp, and the redemption unearned. The film spectacularly fails to make you root for either of the two Mahis. The title may make you believe it is about both of them, but it is Mahendra's and not Mahima’s story.
Kapoor plays a version of the sincere, earnest girl stuck in a dramatic, life-altering situation or with a man who doesn’t deserve her, a role she has been dutifully essaying in her last three films,
Good Luck Jerry (2022),
Mili (2022), and
Bawaal (2023). She plays convincing cricket, but she doesn’t have much else to do. The one who does fails to impress. Barring the scene in which he resorts to making ridiculous Instagram reels to get traction, Rao’s performance is painfully stilted and stagey. I’d brushed
Srikanth as an off-kilter lapse of judgement, but our star player is indeed out of form.
Blame it on the IPL, the general election, or the stultifying heat, it has been a depressing summer for cinema. I hope it rains soon. A change in the weather may help lift the gloom and the quality of films.
