Mr & Mrs Mahi, Charming Blend Of Marital Drama & Cricket

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.