Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari Movie Review - Devolution

A brainless, humorless comedy that murders any bits of amusing ideas.

The movie-going audience is often blamed for being attention deficit. Accusations are made that people tend to get busy on their phones if nothing "substantial" happens on screen. While it may be true, some filmmakers use it as a smokescreen to produce a pile of enervated money machines. But what happens when the film turns out to be attention deficit? When it bears intelligence less than that of a two-year-old? One strategy - tried and tested - is to label it as a "leave your brains at home" comedy. Whatever that means. Logic is prohibited; stupidity is rewarded. All this gibberish simply translates to this, "The movie is BAD." You cannot blame the audience for not liking it, and frankly, I cannot imagine a single soul squeezing entertainment out of Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari.

Directed by Abhishek Sharma (Tere Bin Laden, The Shaukeens, Parmanu: The Story of Pokhran, The Zoya Factor), the film has characters walking around with a negative IQ. Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari could have ended within thirty minutes or less if someone knew how to use their brains. Conflicts could have been resolved in seconds if someone merely spoke up the most logical thing required in the ongoing situation. To be fair, there wouldn't have been any conflict at all. This means there would not have been a Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari. Which means they needed to be dumb. Viola! I cracked this one!

If you think I am exaggerating, then consider this scene. Around the interval, Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari sets up a fire, a rift between two lovers. The chances of recovering from it are less. The film bites into someone's career, and we have been told how important this career is to this person. Minutes after intermission, this fire extinguishes courtesy of few cutesy sorry messages, and from the next frame, this couple is seen together on a bike and dancing on the streets. I threw up.

Even if one is willing to suspend his disbelief and accept a person so vacuous, he takes moronic advice from his friend/sidekick or a psychopath who needs therapy, not screen time or a bunch of dull-witted stick figures, the film's tone stands in between as a hurdle. Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari wants to educate us on a couple of serious issues (inter-caste marriage, male ego, double standards) but also wants to be a "leave your brains at home" comedy. Now, this is a marriage with no matching attributes. How can anyone be satisfied? On top of it, add Manoj Bajpayee's weird accent. You wonder why didn't Sharma use the concept of a wedding detective, who also likes acting, to make more comically investigative moments. Or literally anything else. The possibilities are infinite. Why choose a done-to-death, lame romantic route? (Boy meets girl. They fall in love. A loop of agree-disagree starts. Finally, for the sake of it, we reach the platform named Happy Ending.) If nothing else, then commitment towards one aspect - either social messaging or mindless comedy - would have yielded sweeter fruits. Whatever happened to that Abhishek Sharma, who made Tere Bin Laden (2010), I don't know. His subsequent films, after the 2010 surprise hit, are getting progressively worse and less interesting.

You can spot that old Abhishek Sharma in minor details like an "Unwanted" list. For a date, not cinema hall but a Marathi play is preferred, and a "secret" is kept hidden behind the exit door of a coaching class. The term "government servant" starts reflecting "fucker" an effect that felt personal. Did Sharma lose someone to a government employee? Who knows. I wish there were more quirky twists to write about here. Unfortunately, Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari busies itself, pandering to the lowest denominators, but I doubt if even they would emerge impressed.

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