23-05-2025
‘Bhool Chuk Maaf' review: Live, repeat, sigh
Even as Sanjay Mishra delivers a climactic speech at his customary 20 km/hr, a third of Delhi's film journalists are slouching in the aisles of the theatre, physically present, spiritually done. I'm seated, but only just, eyeing the nearest exit, thinking of dinner options and career choices. We've been ground down by Bhool Chuk Maaf, a film about purgatory that feels like purgatory.
Ranjan (Rajkummar Rao) and Titli (Wamiqa Gabbi) are desperate to get married. Her father (Zakir Hussain), though, won't allow them to until unemployed, directionless Ranjan finds a job, any job (very anti-national of the film to suggest there's a job crisis that's driving young men to suicide). This sets up a dreary first 40 minutes, as Ranjan tries to bribe his way to a government job and Titli complains and scolds him (why isn't she looking for a job?). Finally, a fixer named Bhagwan (Mishra) comes through, Ranjan is employed, and a date is set.
Ranjan wakes up on his wedding day… except it isn't. Everything's like the day before: the same chronology of events, the same people doing the same things but as if for the first time. Ranjan stumbles through the day, wakes up the next morning, and it's still mehendi day, and so on in an infinite loop. This is, of course, the plot of the 1993 classic Groundhog Day—though perhaps writer-director Karan Sharma was inspired by Palm Springs, a delightful reworking from 2020 (also set at a wedding, though the main characters in that are the maid of honour and a bridesmaid's boyfriend).
Ranjan escaping the loop is tied to him becoming a better, unselfish person; this too is from Groundhog Day. But Bhool Chuk Maaf lacks the comic timing and eventual sweetness of the Bill Murray film. After propping up Hindi film for over a decade now, the new middle cinema is showing its own decline. In 2013, Seema Pahwa and Sanjay Mishra were part of the wonderful ensemble of Ankhon Dekhi, a foundation film for this movement. They're fine here too, but everything around them has deteriorated. The film is set in Varanasi, maybe even shot there, but Sudeep Chatterjee's photography has a chintzy, unreal look, and the lived-in feeling of the best middle-class comedies is entirely absent. Sharma's writing is occasionally amusing but more often lazy and desperate for laughs (there's a Ranjan line so embarrassing I can't bring myself to type it out—you can find it in the trailer).
A genre on the decline, with an actor showing signs of plateauing. It's not like Rao is unwatchable here. But the deft, surprising performer we knew is on hiatus. In its place is a more durable commodity: louder, broader, something that can be replicated with too much effort in film after film. It's a little sad to see Rao reduced to yelling and grimacing and stepping on cowdung for cheap laughs. But at least he gets those cheap laughs, whereas Gabbi's efforts to match him backfire terribly. It's a disastrous characterisation on her and Sharma's part, whiny and scolding and increasingly peripheral.
The one resonant subplot involves a distraught young man named Hamid (Akash Makhija), whose life becomes linked with Ranjan's. It also continues the job crisis strand from earlier, a rare sobering note in a film without real world worries. Makhija's quiet presence allows Rao to power down and behave like a regular human and not a star carrying a comedy. I'm not sure making a big deal out of Hamid being Muslim helps, though. It doesn't feel mean, but it serves no purpose and feel a little like a gag, especially with the repurposing of Amit Trivedi's 'Allah Meherbaan'.
