My face hurts. I think it's from smiling and cringing so hard my muscles are having an identity crisis. It's almost midnight and I just finished *Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan* on Amazon Prime and my brain is just a jumble of rainbow flags and awkward family dinners. My couch has never felt so simultaneously safe and like a therapist's office.
Okay, so. Kartik and Aman. The way they look at each other. It's not just for laughs, you know? There's this one scene on the train at the very beginning. Aman is trying to read, and Kartik is just... staring. And he leans in and whispers something, and Aman tries so hard to be annoyed but he just melts. I literally leaned forward and whispered "oh my god" to my empty living room. It was so real. So... normal. And that's the whole trick of this movie, isn't it? It takes this "scandalous" relationship and makes it feel like the most mundane, beautiful thing in the world. And then it throws the most ridiculous Indian family imaginable at it.
And oh god, the family. Gajraj Rao is a national treasure. The way he delivers lines with that deadpan, mustache-twirling seriousness while saying the most absurd things... I was physically recoiling. There's this scene. THIS SCENE. The "maalish" scene. I had to pause it. I literally hit the spacebar, got up, walked to my kitchen, drank a glass of water, and stared out the window for a full minute. The sheer, unadulterated awkwardness of it all. The father trying to "massage" the gay out of his son while talking about "setting the bones straight." It's the most uncomfortable, hilarious, bizarrely brilliant scene I've seen in a long time. It's stuck in my head like a song I hate but can't stop humming. The sounds! The grunts! The look of pure determination on his face! I'm cringing just thinking about it again.
It all reminds me of this one time, I must have been 17, and my dad tried to give me "the talk." Not about girls, or boys, or anything like that. He tried to talk to me about my career path. He sat me down, very serious, and started explaining the benefits of a stable job in accounting. Using a PowerPoint presentation he'd made. He had graphs, ishaan. GRAPHS. And he was so earnest, so convinced he was changing my life, and I was just sitting there trying not to laugh because he'd used Comic Sans for the title slide. It's that same feeling of your parents trying so hard to connect with you but speaking a completely different language. It's sweet. It's mortifying. Never mind. That's a stupid story.
But here's the thing. Now that I'm typing this, my brain is starting to second-guess itself. The ending. The big climax at the wedding where everyone has a change of heart. I was tearing up, I'll admit it. The music swelled, the speeches were made, I was all in. But now... was it a bit too easy? Did Gajraj Rao's character really go from "I will literally electrocute my son to make him straight" to "I'm proud of my gay son" in, like, 24 hours? I thought I loved that resolution, but now that I'm typing this... was it actually kind of dumb? I don't know. Maybe it's wish-fulfillment. Maybe that's okay. Maybe a movie like this needs to give us the easy ending we don't get in real life. I'm conflicted.
Honestly, watching this on Prime at home was the only way to go. Can you imagine watching this in a cinema? The second-hand embarrassment would be lethal. On my couch, I could curl into a ball during the awkward bits. I could rewind the "maalish" scene because I couldn't believe what I just witnessed. I could pause to google "how to un-see something" (spoiler: there's no answer). The comfort of my own space made the whole experience more intimate. It felt like I was peeking into this family's most chaotic, private moments. And the songs! "Gabru" came on and I was bopping my head so hard my headphones fell off. It's a total bop. I might have to add it to my party playlist. (It would be a weird party).
And Neena Gupta! She's just... there. Being the coolest grandma ever, dropping truth bombs and looking fabulous. She's the anchor. The one person who seems to live in the real world while everyone else is on another planet. The movie isn't really about being gay, is it? It's about parents. It's about the gap between who they want us to be and who we are. It just uses a same-sex relationship as the most extreme example of that gap. It's clever. It's sneaky.
Okay, my thoughts are starting to slow down. The initial fever dream is fading. What's left is the feeling of a really sweet, really weird, really important movie. It's not perfect. The plot is a bit all over the place, and some of the gags don't land. But when it does, it hits you right in the feels. It made me laugh, it made me cringe, it made me want to call my mom and say... something. I don't know what. I'm just glad I watched it alone on my couch.
Alright, I'm done.
8/10. - solid
-ishaan