Just what’s up with Indian cinema, beats me!After Byomkesh and Piku, I find it difficult to dislike the classy fare that is being tossed our way with undeterred regularity. What will become of pseudo-critics like us, if there is nothing left to criticize, to tear apart with clever jibes? No one pays to write flowery praise, but they do hand you out meal tickets for penning acerbic obituaries!
‘Tanu Weds Manu’ doesn’t return- it rebounds, and on the double!
Not since 3 Idiots can I recall a Hindi movie that enthralled me such. The ticket is worth its weight in gilt; I wouldn’t mind paying double the rate for receiving so much of wholesome entertainment well beyond the simple worth of money. Like the good old times, I wish I could throw coins on the screen, but alas, I would probably be arrested for it by a communist, or an AAP anarchist, or by a swayamsevak snooping for black money. And who carries coins these days- I can’t afford to chuck my credit cards on the screen.
Thank you Bollywood, thank you Kangana for making this simple, endearing, touching movie that seems too short- one wishes the fun lasted some more.
Tanu, after four years of a marriage that seems to be floundering, unnerves her husband Manu to such an extent that he is locked up in a mental asylum, in London where he has a medical practice.(Is four years deliberate, like the many coincidences in this movie, for instance the mole on Tanu’s chin, for instance the first part of this movie that came four years ago, me asks.)
Soon after, she returns home to Birhana Road, Kanpur. Wild, spontaneous, reckless and free spirited, she is a legend in the cramped by lanes of the city where she’s called the Batman; one whose feats are only heard of, not seen. Asking her brother-in-law, Pappi, to get her husband out of the loony lockup, she settles in the old routine of flirting outrageously with her old flames: Jimmy Shergill- her ex-fiancé and local muscleman; an unbelievable rickshaw puller, and a newcomer- a squatter in her home that won’t leave or pay rent- Chintu, a green lawyer.
She lives up the newfound bachelorhood with irresponsible merriment and an utter lack of remorse till her husband, a spineless wimp whom she rightly takes for granted, is fed up enough to send her a legal notice to behave or be divorced. She responds by cocking a usual snook at him. And her lawyer admirer Chintu adds fuel to the fire by dispatching a formal divorce notice- of course- without either the knowledge or the consent of his unwitting and carefree client.
Manu, who has meanwhile discovered an exact replica of the original Tanu in an athletic Haryanvi Kusum Sangwan, feels liberated on receiving the notice, and proceeds to woo Kusum with all the feebleness of a 40-year-old-something who has the trademark paunch, grey hair, double chin and an empty strip of expired Viagra.
A married man who has been a mute witness to the life that has passed him by, he finds in Kusum a balance and sturdiness that he couldn’t in the untamable Tanu. He wants to give himself a second chance, and prove that he too can be a man, and make a marriage work. His love is muted, like his speech; he rarely has anything to say, and Kusum yields to him more out of pity than any enduring physical attraction. He, as someone points out, looks old and jaded enough to be her father. Kusum, out of an unintended coincidence happens to be betrothed to Jimmy Shergill. For Jimmy it’s a double whammy: having first lost to Manu Tanu, and now Kusum. He sets out in search of the r*scal to teach him a lesson.
Chintu, who covets Tanu for himself, plays truant and informs the parties concerned of Tanu’s as well as Manu’s indiscretions, bringing them all together again for the grand climax just when Manu is about to be wedded to an innocent Kusum. Chintu hopes old rivals for Tanu’s affections; Jimmy Shergill and Manu will cross each other out, leaving Tanu for him. Will Tanu and Manu be able to rekindle their lost love-sparks; what will become of Kusum, of Jimmy, and of Chintu? How will this hilarious quadrangle of love be resolved; how will the characters untangle themselves from the maze their entwined love lives have jumbled into; it may be a tad probable, but certainly not predictable.
The movie is hilarious; relying on sitcom, slapstick humor, and witty wordplay to score the easily coming laughs.
Kangana Ranaut, who has a double role as the suave Laknavi urbanite and the rustic Jat belle, plays her role with delightful élan. She rolls her tongue as smoothly around the Bhojpuri dialect, as she clacks it coarsely on the raspy Haryanvi drawl. I bet any girl in Bollywood would clamber aboard in tearing haste a casting couch to be cast in her role.
As Kusum, Kangana plays her role very intelligently as a person who has the sense to never surrender completely to her suitor, knowing him to be still dangling from the umbilical cord of a marriage not yet completely severed, knowing it also to be good should it last, but never truly believing it to last. As Tanu, her freewheeling spirit refuses to be shackled down in the holy bonds of marriage, but love prevails and she fights to win him back.
Manu, the unlikely object of the affections of such spirited and attractive women, is lucky the camera is forgiving, and doesn’t pan on him until absolutely inescapable. I guess being a doctor in the UK must have its charms.
The plot picks on the theme of hapless people treading warily through marriage, which is a virtual minefield.
Glee abounds in this superlative comedy of errors.
It doesn’t preach except for a very brief soliloquy by Kusum’s brother who speaks out forcefully against Gotra and female infanticide in a state notorious for its gender bias and divide.
The music is catchy with ridiculous lyrics that annoy as well as amuse.
Worth all the stars in the firmaments and as many watches! Go love!
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