Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari Review: An image from the film. (Image courtesy: Youtube )
Throw away: Manoj Bajpayee, Diljit Dosanjh, Fatima Sana Shaikh, Manoj Pahwa, Seema Pahwa, Annu Kapoor
Director: Abhishek Sharma
Evaluation: 2.5 stars (out of 5)
We are in 1995. Bombay is about to become Mumbai. A 28-year-old Sikh, born in Ghatkopar, is looking for a bride. His search for a suitable girl is sabotaged by a son-of-the-ground detective who noses, digs dirt on him, and puts an end to his marriage plans. The low blow sets off an improper game of one-upmanship between the two men, dragging their unsuspecting families into the long-standing crash.
That is, in a nutshell, what Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari, a capricious comedy directed by Abhishek Sharma (Tere Bin Laden, Parmanu: The Story of Pokhran, the Zoya Factor) is relevant. Despite two dynamic central performances by Manoj Bajpayee and Diljit Dosanjh, it is far from realizing its full potential as a romantic comedy with genre-defying ambitions. To laugh? Slightly and sporadically. Hilarious? Not by a long chalk.
Rohan Shankar’s script, relying on flippant tricks, rarely goes beyond reference to Hindi movies and TV shows of the 1980s and 1990s (Damini, Karamchand. Shrimaan Shrimati, et al) as period details.
To evoke an era before smartphones, USB drives, and needle-stick operations entered the lexicon and our lives, he throws in a pager or two, a clumsy tape recorder, a moped, and a character who declares the world to be in. shy five years of the new millennium and takes note of the use of the word “cool” to refer to something other than just temperature. And when was the last time we heard a wedding band play Meri pyaari beheniya banegi dulhaniya (Sachcha Jhutha, 1970) in a Hindi film?
The title may evoke the immensity of the solar system but the film is not about to pierce the stratosphere and take off. Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari is a lightweight film that remains firmly anchored on an utterly poor foundation. When it’s not funny, it’s discouragingly childish.
To return to the story, the youngest is Suraj Singh Dhillon (Diljit Dosanjh). He runs a dairy business that his father (Manoj Pahwa), a migrant from Moga, started before his only son was born. His mother (Seema Pahwa) wants him to find a wife. He himself is in a bit of a hurry. He does not want to waste his youth among the buffaloes.
Marriage sleuth Madhu Mangal Rane (Manoj Bajpayee), a single man who took it upon himself to expose all the bad boys, is the disruptor. He lives in a Girgaum chawl with his beautician mother (Supriya Pilgaonkar), with whom he is constantly at odds, a cynical uncle (Annu Kapoor) who doubles as the detective’s assistant, and his younger sister Tulsi (Fatima Sana Shaikh), who has a secret life outside the confines of his conservative middle class Marathi home.
Suraj thinks Tulsi is a “sundar, sanskari Bharatiya naari ka asli roopHe learns early enough that his assumptions are far from true. When the young girl, who has ambitions that put her on a collision course with her older brother, puts all of her cards on the table, she unleashes another facetious turn in the tale.
What Mangal and Suraj do, how and why, forms the substance of the film. If only the script had more insight and sharpness, Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari would have been what he aspires to be: an ironic take on the insider-outside debate that has raged in Mumbai’s political arena for decades.
The film is meant to be a tribute to a city that never sleeps but runs on dreams. However, the conversation about who belongs here and who doesn’t is never more than peripheral to the plot. It is only lifted in passing and never with sufficient force.
By far the most interesting aspect of Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari is Manoj Bajpayee’s game against Diljit Dosanjh. In a movie that has the first one in a key role, you don’t expect his thunder to be stolen by another actor. Dosanjh is on the verge of achieving the impossible.
The controlled verve of the Punjabi actor-singer gives the film a pleasant look. It’s easy to warm up to the performance due to the bubbly nature of the role. Dosanjh adds appreciable warmth to it.
Fatima Sana Shaikh brings to her role an inner strength tempered by an outer serenity, proving that she is an actress who clearly has in her the merit of stepping up her game in more demanding outings (we saw flashes of this in Netflix. Ludo).
Bajpayee’s character is of a completely different timbre than Dosanjh’s. It has several nuances and moods. It is not simply because he assumes several appearances, including that of a woman performing a religious ritual for the health and well-being of her husband even as she chats with another devotee in order to unearth information about a man about to get married. . Her sleight of hand is always so subtle, a perfect foil for Dosanjh’s much simpler and instantly winning act.
It is difficult for an actor to pass himself off as the son of an actress who, in real life, is in the same age range. While Supriya Pilgaonkar is delightful as a spirited matron whose beauty salon shares space with Madhu Mangal’s detective agency, the duo occasionally throw a twist. But the two actors are so good at what they do that after a while, you stop being too stung by the gap.
More than anything else in the dotty caper film tit-for-tat, it’s the clash of two acting schools – or rather, one school on the one hand and an absence on the other – that worth watching. The first is obviously represented by Bajpayee, the second by Dosanjh. Roles and approaches differ considerably, but both hold their place, making it an intriguing spectacle. If only it had been a more substantial romantic comedy than it is, the two actors could have pulled the film out of its mire of banality.
Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari is too focused on the clash of cultures and temperaments – Suraj is happy to be able to read a comic in two hours while the ambitious Tulsi Rane is passionate about Marathi theater – to notice that it doesn’t say anything of real importance. Too bad. Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari would have been a much bigger deal if its intention had been translated into action in a more meaningful and measured way.
