Mubarakan BO and Review Thread

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rohit jaiswal @rohitjswl01

NEW DELHI: Cast: Arjun Kapoor, Anil Kapoor, Ileana D'Cruz, Athiya Shetty, Neha Sharma, Ratna Pathak Shah
Director: Anees Bazme
Rating: Two stars

Twin trouble capers come preloaded with a certain degree of comic verve. So does Mubarakan, directed by Anees Bazmee of No Entry and Singh is Kinng fame. But in trying to squeeze every ounce of hilarity out of its scrappy screenplay, the film goes overboard with its excessive cheeriness and swerves into the realms of inanity. In the bargain, it loses its way completely after delivering a fairly breezy first half.

Mubarakan is generally puerile, occasionally fun, and always unabashedly over the top. It is just the sort of mix of song, dance, comic gags and unbridled lunacy that Bollywood's mass audience so loves. So, there is superhit written all over the film, but this puffy concoction simply isn't for those with a taste for more subtle and easy-flowing humour. Mubarakantries too hard to tickle our funny bones and the effort shows.



Its songs and comic gags are of the routine variety. It seeks to propel itself on the back of the seductive power of familiarity, manages to do a tolerable job pre-interval but, taken as a whole, Mubarakan is neatly and niftily packaged crap that never stops reeking of stupidity. If there is anything positive in this attempted laugh riot, it is its refusal to take itself seriously - an attribute that stands the film in good stead when it begins to stretch beyond the plausible and the passable.

Mubarakan is a comedy that revolves around two weddings and a whole lot of confusion. Before the lovebirds can have their nuptials solemnized in a gurudwara, they have to fly though two-and-a-half hours of turmoil caused by familial pressures and mistaken amorous liaisons.


The twins separated at birth are played by Arjun Kapoor. One, Charan, grows up as a turbaned Sardar in the home of Baldev (Pavan Malhotra) in Punjab. The other, Karan, is raised by Baldev's elder sister Jeeto (Ratna Pathak Shah), in London. In the film's opening sequence, the two boys lose their parents in a road mishap. Their spinster uncle Kartar (Anil Kapoor), who has turned a rustic part of the UK into a mini Punjab, divides the orphans between his two elder siblings and then proceeds to fuel the chaos that ensues when the duo is ready for dalliances.

The clumsy Charan, five minutes Karan's junior, loves Nafisa Qureishi (Neha Sharma) but lacks the guts to let his conservative family know his feelings for the girl. As a consequence, his father and his London-based aunt decide that he is a suitable boy for Binkle (Athiya Shetty), daughter of a wealthy Punjabi (Rahul Dev).


Charan turns to uncle Kartar for help in order to scuttle the impending wedding. At the uncle's behest, he passes himself off as a drug addict. Binkle's father and her brother Manpreet (Karan Kundrra) throw a fit and humiliate Charan's adoptive father Baldev. The latter and Jeeto end up fighting so violently over the imbroglio that they stop talking to each other. The slighted Baldev asserts that he will find a bride for Charan within a month. He leaves for Chandigarh without exchanging goodbyes.



In Punjab, Baldev chances upon Sweety Gill (Ileana D'Cruz) and plumps for her as Charan's future wife. The trouble is, unbeknownst to the world, Sweety is Karan's girlfriend. She has had the worst possible brush with Jeeto, calling her would-be mom-in-law names that the latter doesn't forget in a hurry. The next thing that the cocksure Karan knows is that he is now the chosen one for Binkle. He, too, seeks the intervention of Kartar in order to wriggle out of the hole he has dug for himself.

The rigmarole is enjoyable up to a point but once the idiocy quotient peaks, the overlong Mubarakan goes somewhat haywire. Yet, if it isn't as insufferable as other average Bollywood romantic comedies, a part of the credit goes to the actors. Anil Kapoor, who is as irrepressible as ever, lends some lustre to the proceedings with his impressive energy levels and funny one-liners.

Arjun Kapoor is far less consistent in his double role, but he does strike a few purple patches along the way, demonstrating a comic flair that cries out for a better film than this one. The script gives Athiya Shetty the rough end of the stick. Her character, as Kartar says at one point, is like a tennis ball being lobbed back and forth between Charan's side of the court and Karan's without being allowed any agency of her own. Mubarakan, however, gives Ileana D'Cruz far more space and she makes the most of the opportunity.


Neha Sharma, in a special appearance, is allowed little that could be described as special in a role that definitely deserved more attention. She plays a tough Muslim girl with a successful law career who does not fit into the orthodox Sikh brood's scheme of things and has to settle for a hurried, last-minute adjustment, which entails jumping into a new relationship with Binkle's brother. That's a copout of the worst kind. But to expect nuanced and mould-breaking social dynamics in a film like Mubarakan is to take it more seriously than its makers themselves do.

And that isn't a great idea: watch Mubarakan only if you dig comedies that do not demand that you dig deep for logic and meaning.

4 hours ago

A bunch of actors get a paid vacation to London for Anees Bazmee's Mubarakan, but only two of them really deserve the holiday. One is Anil Kapoor, looking more spry and enthusiastic than half the cast and completely at ease with the brash, loud and occasionally amusing comedy of errors that Bazmee is known for.

The other is Pavan Malhotra, who yells so loudly in every scene that he can surely be heard in outer space, but he deserves his holiday anyway because he is actually too good for this schtick.

The rest of the cast assemble and disperse when required, pull faces on demand, and try to keep up with the twists that Mubarakan's writers conjure up at every bend because somebody on the production thought that it was a good idea to have a 156- minute movie about mixed identities.

There's just about enough material here for a crisp comedy about twins who get engaged to each other's girlfriends after a series of torturous events. Identical twins Karan and Charan (Arjun Kapoor) are brought up by different members of the family after their parents die in an accident. Their uncle Kartar Singh (Anil Kapoor) causes further damage when he tries to ensure that Karan wins his girlfriend Sweety (Ileana D'Cruz) while Charan is married to Nafisa (Neha Sharma). When Charan falls for Binkle (Athiya Shetty), who is supposed to be engaged to Karan, Kartar has his work cut out for him.

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There is little to tell the twins apart, apart from the fact that one wears a turban as per the Sikh faith and the other doesn't. Arjun Kapoor, who proves the ancient Indian saying "Nepotism rocks, lumbers through every one of his scenes. He is matched in his incompetence by Shetty and D'Cruz, and compared to them, Anil Kapoor looks like a thespian on loan from the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Some scenes work better than others, especially the suggestion that Kartar Singh has created a mini-Punjab in London, right down to the sunflower fields. There's also a British extra who plays one Jolly, Kartar Singh's Punjabi-speaking house manager, who gets the laughs. It's good of Jolly to have learnt the language that is second only to Hindi in Bollywood this movie is actually in Punjabi, with Hindi thrown in.

The movie might have worked if it had been a non-stop comedy from start to finish, but Bazmee makes the mistake of trying to introduce sentimental scenes about family ties and estranged siblings. Anil Kapoor's energy is almost infectious, but it doesn't spread far enough.