Mister Mummy Movie Review: Riteish
Deshmukh & Genelia D’Souza A Dated
Product Confused Whether It Wants To
Entertain, Educate, Or Just Exist
Mister Mummy cannot find a redemption because it doesn’t even try to find
one
Star Cast: Riteish Deshmukh, Genelia D’Souza, Mahesh Manjrekar & ensemble.
Director: Shaad Ali.
What’s Good: Genelia D’Souza’s adorable screen presence.
What’s Bad: Shaad goes back in time and forgets the audience he is making the product for. The treatment is so dated and done to death that nothing triggers or moves anything.
Loo Break: You can watch this film from any minute and understand what’s going on. No, it isn’t simplistic, it’s supremely repetitive. Stay in the loo come by the end and you might have not missed much.
Watch or Not?: Wait for OTT premiere or if you have better plans, even skip that.
Language: Hindi.
Available on: In Theatres Near You!
Runtime: 98 Minutes.
User Rating:
Childhood sweethearts, now married have varied opinions about bringing a child to this world. One fine day they find out that both are expecting and the world turns upside down for the two.
Mister Mummy Movie Review: Script Analysis
It is the second movie about pregnant people making peace with the condition they are in and contemplating the future with a new member. Yes, the other one is Anjali Menon’s directorial Wonder Women. A movie so personal and fulfilling that it triggers a conversation, teaches you new ways and even leaves you with a smile. Shaad Ali brings his old world filmmaking without the urge to progress or shape it for a more substantial story and just exists.
Written by Ali with Ananya Sharma, Mister Mummy doesn’t have a blueprint. It is one of those mid-90s – early 2000s Govinda and Salman Khan movies that existed from song to song and were shot in forced foreign locations, where some popular museums or castles were used as homes for characters and the location made no sense at all to the narrative. Remember when I said dated, I meant this.
Shaadi Ali who has directed some of the most well-made romantic movies, though most of which were remakes, had his flair for depicting romance. The way he chose to let the love breathe and the characters take shape of their own. But the Ali of the present is so busy just creating gags and scenes to fit between two songs that he doesn’t let anything have a conversation with his audience. To top it all, he tries to cash in Riteish and Genelia’s real-life couple popularity and doesn’t give them much more than that. There is no effort in giving them an entirely new vibe.
For example, it is about a couple pregnant together. But nowhere in the movie is there a scene where they are battling the situation together. Rather Genelia just ends up becoming a plot point. There is confusion throughout here about what are we supposed to invest our attention in. The distressed marriage, of a pregnant man, who is nothing but an irritated man-child. The punches don’t land well and there is no structure to the mess it becomes after a point. The short runtime is the only redemption to be found.
Mister Mummy Movie Review: Star Performance
Genelia D’Souza’s screen presence is adorable and she looks cute every time she appears on the screen. But an entire movie cannot be hooked on that one good aspect. There is nothing new or something worth calling a comeback here because it is just a variation of the same character we have seen all the years in the 2000s. An angry wife finally comes to the husband and has a breakdown scene.
Even the husband is a stereotype of all the irritated husbands there have been. The difference is that he is pregnant. Riteish Deshmukh tries too hard to make this work but there is no scope for it because the ship is weak even on paper. Whoever thought that moustache looked good on him, please return your paycheck.
Mahesh Manjrekar is the best thing though. He plays a doctor and his approach to the character is OTT. Imagine Karan Johar and his mean humour as a doctor, Manjrekar is that and more.
Mister Mummy Movie Review: Direction, Music
Shaad Ali is easily impressed with all the mediocrity in this one. He is okay if a foreign school with predominantly white kids print pamphlets in Hindi. If the brown kids in the school speak proper Hindi without any accent. If the world around visually looks as made up as possible, because let us all agree we even criticised the Raichand mansion in Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham and that was 2001. 20 years and some of us refuse to change.
The music here is again a replica of gazillion songs T-Series produces every week. Nothing new.
Mister Mummy Movie Review: The Last Word
Mister Mummy cannot find a redemption because it doesn’t even try to find one.
Mister Mummy Trailer
Mister Mummy releases on 18 November, 2022.
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