Zara Hatke Zara Bachke Review: Pay Attention To The Warning In The Title - Best Avoided
The third Hindi movie from director-turned-cinematographer Laxman Utekar, Zara Hatke Zara Bachke, strives to combine broad humour with a dash of sentimentality. It collapses between two stools and becomes an awkward, lopsided pile of a movie.
The greatest damage to Zara Hatke Zara Bachke is the plot's uncanny predictability despite its novel fundamental idea. A young couple makes the decision to demolish their house in order to buy one. The daring ruse causes enormous uncertainty, surprises their relatives, and causes such emotional upheaval that it almost destroys their marriage.
But does the film deliver genuine hilarity? No. Zara Hatke Zara Bachke hinges more on outright horseplay than pure absurdist fun. When the film tries to be funny, the actors are called upon to fall back on physical gesticulation and facial contortions to convey an air of mirth. It is all a tad too tiresome.
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A live-in couple in Mathura pretended to be legally married in Utekar's previous Hindi comedy Luka Chuppi to avoid the unwanted attention of their family and society.
Zare Hatke Zara Bachke canters around another couple pulling out a trick that does not sit well with their orthodox relatives and is situated in another little town, Indore. Reeks of a formula that is obviously no longer useful.
Yoga instructor, Kapil Dubey (Vicky Kaushal) and his wife of two years, Somya Chawla Dubey (Sara Ali Khan), share a small home that was left to the latter's father (Akash Khurana) by his father.
Having to give up their bed and sleep on the floor with a nosy nephew in between them because Kapil's maternal uncle and aunt share a home with them. They clearly didn't get what they expected.
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Since Kapil's maternal aunt and uncle share a home, he and Somya are forced to sleep on the floor with a nosy nephew in between them instead of in their bed. It is clear that they did not get what they expected.
Somya discovers a government-mandated programme for low-cost housing at the coaching centre where she works. She sees it as a chance to escape her in-laws' reducing the surrounding environment.
Somya and Kapil learn that the requirements for eligibility are strict and that only those without any property registered in their names are eligible to participate in the lottery. Only if Somya were to get back together with a man would the couple be eligible for the programme.
They decide to divorce legally at the urging of a local fixer named Bhagwandas Ishwardas Sahai (Inaamulhaq). Manoj Bhagel, a friend of Kapil's played by Himanshu Kohli, aids the couple in filing for divorce. The judge initially counsels Kapil and Somya to try again with their marriage.
The divorce is finalised with only a few hiccups, and Somya subsequently applies for a flat, but the remainder of the plot does not go as expected. The movie loses control as well, lurching erratically from one clumsy twist to the next without offering any genuine surprises.
Zara Hatke Zara Bachke is the kind of movie that provides the actors absolutely no chance to escape the maze. Everyone in the cast, including the two leads, puts on a show to get noticed above the din.
If the image of Punjabis as a violent, heavy drinkers is a bummer, the film overcompensates by portraying the hero's puritanical Brahmin family as a brood that is just as outrageous. The heroine's Sikh father matches the stereotype in every way. The movie doesn't care about subtlety, like it or not.
Despite the occasional amusing sections the movie stitches together in the early half, the flimsy and haphazard family drama swiftly runs into a surplus of didactic mush by the time it gets to the meat of the matter.
Like most films that begin as comedies before pretending to be sombre weepies, Zara Hatke Zara Bachke, Pre-climactic scenes include a medical emergency and a family visit to the hospital as a lead-in to a tear-filled round of revelations, confessions, and apologies.
Vicky Kaushal and Sara Ali Khan's performances of the happily married couple whose affection for one another soars in the face of obstacles and then teeters on the brink of implosion are as wildly inconsistent as the movie itself. Their chemistry is impressive when it's strong. They pull in various directions when they are not.
Both Sharib Hashmi, who plays a migrant who works as a security guard and Inaamulhaq, who plays a fast-talking comic conman, deliver some of the movie's livelier moments, but their efforts are wasted in a movie that is bogged down by its own convolutions.
Zara Hatke Zara Bachke: Pay Attention To The Warning In The Title - Best Avoided
Cast:
Vicky Kaushal, Sara Ali Khan, Inaamulhaq
Director:
Laxman Utekar
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