Mubarakan Review: Anil Kapoor shines in this half-decent comedy

Movie: Mubarakan

Cast: Anil Kapoor, Arjun Kapoor, Athiya Shetty, Ileana D’Cruz, Ratna Pathak Shah, Neha Sharma

Director: Anees Bazmee

Production Company: Cine1 Studios, Mark Production

Rating: 2.5 Stars

Anil Kapoor and Arjun Kapoor’s latest offering Mubarakan has made it to theatres and it’s time to give you all our take on it. Keep in mind, that this film is an Anees Bazmee directorial, which means that you can only enjoy this comedy film if you leave your brains at home. The element of confusion, meddling people, a clarification in the most awkward situation are left intact, which means that Bazmee has stayed true to his type of films.

Mubarakan opens in the Punjab of the 90’s where a car accident leads to two orphaned twins who get raised separately by different members of the family. Karan (Arjun Kapoor) is raised in London while Charan (Arjun Kapoor again) is brought up in Chandigarh. Karan has a highly unlikeable girlfriend Sweety (Ileana D’Cruz) while Charan is head over heels for a lawyer Nafisa (Neha Sharma) back home, which he cannot speak about with his patriarchal father because, well, she does not have a Kaur in her name.

As is evident in the trailer, there is nothing common between the twins (with the exception of a questionable dressing sense) but both tend to get tongue tied whenever the topic of their love life shows up.

Since Sweety is disliked by Karan’s family as much as you’d eventually will, the family, headed by Karan’s mother, Ratna Pathak Shah, plot to get him married with Binkle (Enter Athiya Shetty). Karan is, obviously not too keen on the union, much like Charan, who later lands up in a confusion after getting a glimpse of the proposed bride-to-be.

As there is an inevitable Anees Bazmee style confusion that is boiling up, there is only one man who the twins look up to, you guessed it, is their youngest uncle Kartar Singh (Anil Kapoor) who has a British accent, lives in a home which would be similar to someone’s residence in Punjab as a sign of homage and has a yes man in his man Friday, who keeps his Punjaab Di Yaadein alive by offering lassi to the houseguests. Soon, Kartar cooks up the idea of attempting to convince Binkle’s family that Karan is a drug addict, for reasons which are obvious by that time.

Even though Anil’s character is torn apart between lots of things, he still comes across as the soul of this ensemble comedy and makes up for the rest who are trying hard to make the audience chuckle with overwritten speeches and juvenile arguments which we hoped that the Censor Board used their scissors on. For once, they could have done something which would have been remotely commendable.

Fortunately, the standard of jokes in this situational comedy does not fall down to where they shouldn’t be, so it remains to stay true to the family entertainment genre which manages to crackle up the auditorium, courtesy Anil Kapoor. I wouldn’t recommend this movie to anyone who finds it hard to keep their sense of logic at bay.