Rating: ****
Mr & Mrs Mahi is bright and revealing in that rare kind of way where the cinematic emotions never drown the underlining lifelike wisdom.
At one point, Kumud Mishra asks his screen-wife Zarina Wahab if she got a particular line from the WhatsApp.
“No, I got it from life,”she replies with a smile.
Sweeping the WhatsApp generation off its collective feet Mr & Mrs Mahi takes the audience into a traditional Basu Chatterjee romcom and emerges from the joyride with a film that is original and endearing.
Mr & Mrs Mahi starts off as a marriage between two cricket lovers who discover the big secret about one another on their wedding night. The early scenes sparkle with a coltish synergy. Nothing that Mr Mahi says to his Missus is particularly smart , and that’s the perfect pitch for this couple.
Janhvi Kapoor and Rajkummar Rao, have never been in better form .
Although one of the two protagonists is a loser, director Sharan Sharma’s second film for Karan Johar is a winner all the way. In what is possibly one of the bravest most nakedly unheroic roles written for a male actor, Rajkummar Rao shines as Mahendra, a.k.a Mahi, an abused son of a spots shop owner(the unerringly dependable Kumud Mishra).
Mahi once wanted to b a cricketer. He is now resigned to his life as an apprentice in his father’s store. He is a simmering cauldron of resentment waiting to explode.
Marriage changes everything for Mahi, including his destiny.The girl chosen to marry Mahi is Mahima,a.k.a Mahi. And guess what! She too is a cricket enthusiast.Whether you are one or not, this film will have you cheering for these two ordinary lives intertwined by that obsolete institution known as marriage.
Mr & Mrs Mahi starts off as a marriage between two cricket lovers who discover the big secret about one another on their wedding night. The early scenes sparkle with a coltish synergy. Nothing that Mr Mahi says to his Missus is particularly smart, and that’s the perfect pitch for this couple.
Good actors don’t need a wide platform to prove their mettle.The same goes for stories that connect with us not for their larger-than-life design, but for their proclivity to peep into life’s harshest truths without getting overly grim in tone.