Suhani Singh

Varun Dhawan has made a decent living playing the man who refuses to grow up. Once again, his father David Dhawan, in what’s billed as his last directorial venture, gives the son a character that requires Varun to be in ‘Energiser Bunny’ mode throughout. Pause and thairaav are negligible words in the Dhawan universe of comedies that has delighted at least two generations of viewers. But the impact of those tried-and-tested funny games is fading. That’s best evident in Hai Jawaani Toh Ishq Hona Hai’s hero, who takes the cake in his ability to believe he’s beyond wrongdoing and in the sympathy he feels entitled to.

“Daayan”. “Chudail”. “Vaishya”. “Chhichhori”. “Massage queen”. “Husband killer”. “Rekha ka dekha”. In Maa Behen, the list of slanders that Rekha (Madhur Dixit Nene) is subjected to is endless. There are multiple urban legends of her exploits in the locality—true or not is up for debate—but director Suresh Triveni and writer Pooja Tolani make one thing clear from the onset: Rekha is a single parent who has raised two daughters, Jaya (Triptii Dimri) and Sushma (Dharna Durga), on her own. That the daughters too believe some of these rumours around their mother is a source of laughs, not tension, in the film. Perhaps there’s no more complex relationship than mother-daughter. Surprisingly, it’s an unexplored dynamic in mainstream Hindi cinema, and Maa Behen dives into it with a distinct, quirky approach. There’s distrust, finger-pointing, screaming contests and constant reprimanding from both sides.

All Bishnu wants is to show she can do it all. Lift a gas cylinder. Ensure the family in the orange orchard pays up. Get her elder sister to finish her graduation. Get into a relationship. And not care ‘ki log kya kahenge’. But patriarchy lurks like a dark shadow in the village to which she has returned after a stint in New Delhi. And women have made peace with their roles and gender dynamics. So when Bishnu behaves like the man of the house, there are clashes with her mother and sister. For Bishnu’s mom, asserting independence is a way of disbanding from the community; for Bishnu, it is just the natural way to be. For her pregnant sister, there are regrets; for Bishnu, it’s never too late to do what you want. “I’ll see what kind of a husband a judgemental person likes you gets,” remarks her sister while her mother has had it with her temper and irritable behaviour.

Dorky, geeky men too can get lucky in love. That’s the basic premise of Ek Din, featuring Junaid Khan as the said dork-geek, with Sai Pallavi playing the pretty woman way out of his league. During the course of two hours, the film pushes the idea that even if IT guy Dinesh (Khan) has a colourless personality and, therefore, is forgettable and invisible to most people, he still is good boyfriend material because he’s cloyingly sincere and shy. Only that Khan, while befitting the part in the physical sense, struggles to pull off the task of making audiences root for Dinesh in his quest for love.

Strange things are unfolding in writer-director Ritwik Pareek’s debut feature from the get-go. There’s a drunk man riding his motorbike on a highway in darkness and barely holding it together. He meets his death in the ghastliest manner in a hit-and-run accident while his Luna remains unscathed. A peculiar billboard featuring a magician, image of a body split into half, and two sultry women is the only witness. And so begins Pareek’s trippy, wild adventure that’s invigorating and amusing while partially losing direction.

The biggest sin a filmmaker can commit is to not make audiences care. Not for the characters, not for the events unfolding. Bhooth Bangla, the Priyadarshan-helmed horror comedy, is fully committed to this cause from the get-go. That it distances itself from the audiences with a genre much loved of late makes it all the more unbelievable. At the core of this misfire is the plotline, which revolves around Vadhasur, a bat-faced monster whose modus operandi is similar to that of Sanjeev Kumar in the cult film Jaani Dushman: abduct and kill new brides in Mangalpur. Vadhasur’s kill count ensures that no wedding takes place there, and the odd one that does goes horribly wrong.

A dark cloud of anxiety and unease hangs over Swati (Nehha Pendse) as she negotiates unwanted attention of her boss (Jaimini Pathak) and a mounting debt. Her younger sister, Sarika, (Sonalee Kulkarni) is in no better position, feeling stifled as the sole caretaker of their ailing mother and a stuttering career. The estranged sisters are united by the fact of their mother (Bharti Achrekar) being terminally ill. It doesn’t take long before they start bickering like children even as they turn caretakers.

Three months after writer-director Aditya Dhar set the box office ablaze with Dhurandhar, he brings another, longer round of his violent saga. This time, there’s a sharp political manifesto attached. Yes, Pakistan is India’s favourite worst enemy, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a key character here, even if it means showing him through videos of his speeches playing in the background. Referred to as “chaiwala” by the villains, his decisions cause as much headache in Pakistan as Hamza’s actions do.