Review suraj pe mangal bhari

Producer-Zee Studios

Director- Abhishek Sharma

Star Cast: Manoj Bajpayee, Diljit Dosanjh, Fatima Sana Shaikh, Annu Kapoor, Supriya Pilgaonkar, Vijay Raaz, Seema Pahwa, Manoj Pahwa, Manuj Sharma and Neha Phendse

Genre- Comedy

Rating- **

FUNNY IN PARTS

Jyothi Venkatesh

The film opens with a young Sikh dairy business owner shooting a video to attract prospective brides. Suraj Singh Dhillon (Diljit Dosanjh) wears a turban and speaks Hindi with a heavy Punjabi accent. Incidentally after a long gap of eight months, this one is the only Hindi Diwali release all over the country.

The wedding detective as he priers to call himself, Madhu Mangal Rane (Manoj Bajpayee) has vowed to get bad candidates out of all the future brides’ ways in Mumbai (then Bombay) and has succeeded in exposing 48 grooms in all but the 49th one turns out to be a bouncer in his life. Suraj Singh Dhillon (Diljit Dosanjh) is just 28 and when he is on a spree of drinking beer, Rane catches him off-guard and Dhillon is now desperate without a bride. ‘Suraj Pe Mangal Bhaari’ chronicles the clash of these two adult-children and is a zany capper! Set in 1995, the film made by Zee Studios tries to plug in the channel many times.

Papa Dhillon (Manoj Pahwa) has married the love of his life (Seema Bhargava), thus inheriting 22 buffaloes. Mangal’s sister Tulsi Rane (Fatina Sana Shaikh) is a docile Marathi household girl who doubles up as a DJ in a pub. Suraj woos her and just when he is about to succeed in winning her hand in marriage, Mangal plays the spoilsport and thwarts his chances at the altar and the plot by framing Suraj’s parents in a dowry case and sending the father and the son to jail and the film becomes yet another one where the hero plots revenge on the guy who makes him a loser but towards the climax.

The bad guy realizes that he has wronged his own poor sister and decides to make amends. And all's well that ends well when in a forced ending Suraj goes out of his way to get the divorce that Mangal’s ex flame Kavya Godbole (Neha Pendse) seeks without success for the last twenty and odd years from her nincompoop lawyer husband (Vijay Raaz)

The lives of Suraj and Mangal collide when Madhu’s snooping ends up nixing a marriage proposal that Suraj is keen on. Suraj vows revenge. Hence the title is a play on the adverse effect of Mars/Mangal on astrological charts and literally, a play on the protagonists’ names. Making you wonder what a lop-sided half baked screenplay it is, you have Annu Kapoor as Kaka – a family friend who likes to gorge at chicken biriyani at the expense of poor Suraj and a liability whose only contribution is that he had once helped Rane’s deceased father with 1200 rupees but lives off his family and is seen in both Mangal’s office as well as house 24/7.

The best thing about the films is the natural flair for comedy and dialogue delivery prowess of Diljeet Dosanjh. Manoj Bajpayee fits the part as the bachelor who is ageing but in certain frames he looks his real age which only helps him get into the skin of his character easily. Supriya Pilgaonkar and Anu Kapoor have been wasted while Vijay Raaz goes overboard in an unbelievable character. Manoj Pahwa and Seema Pahwa as parents of Suraj do a fine job while Fatima Sana Shaikh is passable.

The cast is filled with artistes who have a solid track record, but Dosanjh gets the best lines and succeeds in overshadowing even a veteran like Bajpayee who gets equal space in the script. Supriya Pilgaonkar playing Madhu’s mother and Manuj Sharma as Suraj’s side-kick friend are as adorable as Dosanjh in the film. Though the film is entertaining on the whole and funny in parts, director Abhishek Shaarma who was very impressive in his earlier films like Tere Bin Laden gets topsy turvy somewhere as the plot progresses as he tends to take too many liberties at the cost of logic in a plot set in 1995 in aamchi Mumbai.