Mr Singh Mrs Mehta

It doesn’t take long for debutant director Pravesh Bhardwaj’s film to slip into absurd territory, made even worse by abysmal acting

Neha Bhatt

Updated on: 5 February 2022 8:05 pm

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Mr Singh Mrs Mehta

Starring: Aruna Shields, Prashant Narayanan, Lucy Hassan, Naved Aslam
Directed by Pravesh Bhardwaj
Rating: *

It doesn’t take long for debutant director Pravesh Bhardwaj’s Mr Singh Mrs Mehta to slip into absurd territory. In a plot suspiciously similar to Wong Kar-Wai’s classic In The Mood For Love, Neera Singh (Aruna Shields) and Ashwin Mehta (Prashant Narayanan) happen to jointly discover that their spouses are having an affair. But there are no confrontations or ugly scenes—Mr Singh (Naved Aslam) and Mrs Mehta (Lucy Hassan) are able to take off secretly to Paris for a romantic getaway. The broken-hearted Neera needs a shoulder to cry and it is Ashwin’s—naturally. An unconvincing version of the betrayed husband, he seems rather too excited at the prospect of undressing Neera (yes, you read right) to help her recovery. A painter that he is—the artsy, chain-smoking type—he embarks on a Leonardo di Caprio-style pose-in-the-nude project with Neera, who quickly gives in, after displaying a few flashes of uncharacteristic shyness about undressing. By the way, for all the pre-release talk about nudity being central to the film’s theme of infidelity and how it boldly made it past the censor board, the peek-a-boo show here is embarrassingly lame.

It’s really hard to keep up with the strangeness of the Mehtas and Singhs, the arbitrary things the plot makes them do and say, made even worse by the abysmal acting. Aruna’s stumbling, irritating, high-pitched Hindi and misplaced display of emotions inspire no empathy. Prashant’s sparks of talent are completely wasted. Second leads Aslam and Hassan are plain painful to watch. London, where the two unfortunate couples reside, comes across as a nondescript, shady place—a hard thing to do to a beautiful city—and much of the film suffers from a seriously tacky ’90s Bollywood hangover, with never-ending and uninspired ghazals. In the midst of her dilemma, Aruna even mouths idiotic lines like, “Mera pati hamesha tumhari patni ko ghumata rehta hain, tumko bhi mujh par kharcha karna chahiye.” Would you waste your money on this one?

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