Pati Patni Aur Woh movie review: Kartik Aaryan, Bhumi Pednekar make this comedy work | Bollywood - Hindustan Times
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Pati Patni Aur Woh movie review: Kartik Aaryan, Bhumi Pednekar make this comedy work

Hindustan Times | ByMonika Rawal Kukreja
Aug 02, 2020 01:22 AM IST

Pati Patni Aur Woh movie review: Kartik Aaryan and Bhumi Pednekar put in credible performances in this funny but problematic film.

Pati Patni Aur Woh
Cast: Kartik Aaryan, Bhumi Pednekar, Ananya Panday, Aparshakti Khurana
Director: MudassarAziz

Pati Patni Aur Woh stars Kartik Aaryan, Bhumi Pednekar and Ananya Panday in lead roles.
Pati Patni Aur Woh stars Kartik Aaryan, Bhumi Pednekar and Ananya Panday in lead roles.

Remakes can be a tricky business as comparisons are bound to happen with the original content. Here’s one right at the beginning: I had one problem when I recently watched the original Pati Patni Aur Woh (starring Sanjeev Kumar, Ranjeeta and Vidya Sinha). The writers and the director gave us naive women who will believe every word a man says, even agreeing to continue with a relationship despite knowing that the man cheated. Cut to 2019, three decades later, and Mudassar Aziz’s modern take on Pati Patni Aur Woh didn’t rectify that mistake either. The whole premise that a guy can so easily fool his wife and the woman he loves outside his marriage is so troubling.

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Watch | Pati Patni Aur Woh | Public Review | Kartik Aaryan | Bhumi Pednekar | Ananya Panday

 

The film starts with a dashing voiceover by Jimmy Sheirgill who asserts that ‘aisa koi sawal nahi jiska uttar aapko Uttar Pradesh mein na mile’. And then we’re introduced to Abhinav Tyagi aka Chintu (Kartik Aaryan), who works as a government employee in Kanpur’s PWD department. He married Vedika Tripathi (Bhumi Pednekar), a physics teacher from Lucknow, at an early age. Vedika aspires to live in Delhi because modern-day life is more tempting. They get married soon after their first meeting where Vedika makes it clear that she ‘likes sex’, and the two lead ‘happily ever after’ life for three years until Tapasya Singh (Ananya Panday) shifts from Delhi to Kanpur to find a location to set up a workshop for her designer boutique.

Bhumi Pednekar does well as Vedika.
Bhumi Pednekar does well as Vedika.

Just when Chintu was looking for ways to spice up his mundane married life, he is assigned the job of helping Tapasya find the plot and, in no time, he gets into a I-don’t-know-how-it-started and I-am-not-even-sure-of-what’s-going-on-between-us relationship with her. Between all this, Chintu’s colleague and best friend, Fahim Rizvi (Aparshakti Khurana) backs his gharwali-baharwali game and saves him each time he is about to get caught red-handed. What ensues next is a series of confusions, complications, white lies and realisations that sound rather illogical.

The film, though problematic in parts, works as a comedy, particularly the scenes which feature Kartik Aaryan and Aparshakti Khurrana.
The film, though problematic in parts, works as a comedy, particularly the scenes which feature Kartik Aaryan and Aparshakti Khurrana.

The film’s tone is sexist, where it is okay to call your best friend’s girlfriend as daayan, chudail and naagin. Call it a comedy of errors and it won’t be wrong because there are plenty of them that look unsettling. I couldn’t help noticing how the film ridiculously switches between Kanpur to Lucknow in a matter of seconds and without even giving the audience a proper reason. Maybe, location consistency is something that makers didn’t pay any attention to.

Talking of comedy, the humour is well-placed but you can’t call it extraordinary. At places where the comic element goes down, the makers have cleverly infused it with witty dialogues and one-liners like ‘No what no why, free free bird blue blue sky’, ‘Vichaar karne se bachhe paida nahi hote’, ‘Ladki dekhte hi how I wonder what you are ho jaate ho’.

Also read: Neha Kakkar slams Gaurav Gera, Kiku Sharda for body-shaming her: ‘Thankless people, aren’t you ashamed?’

Comic timing is one thing that goes in favour of Pati Patni Aur Woh. Especially the camaraderie and banter between Kartik and Aparshakti’s characters is so good that it keeps you invested whenever the two appear together on screen. There are little nuances that are quite pleasant to watch. For instance, how Chintu and Vedika address each other as Tyagi ji and Tripathi, respectively shows the modern-age bonding between couples. There’s Vedika’s mausa ji, too, who like an annoying relative, will pile on at his relative’s house, and do nothing but eat, sleep, snore, fart and repeat.

Kartik Aaryan once again plays what he’s best at — the guy next door with his innate talent for monologues. He might be getting close to being typecast but guess he’s okay to risk that at this moment.

Ananya Panday is stuck with her rigid expressions that don’t seem to change throughout the film. Even when she tries to look the typical good-looking Delhi girl, it doesn’t work.

Bhumi, on the other hand, wins as Vedika. Her confidence, swag, dialect and even the expressions say a lot about how comfortable she is in the skin of her character. While the romance between Kartik and Bhumi looks real, you can’t say the same about Kartik-Ananya dalliance. There’s just no chemistry there.

Ananya Panday tries to look the typical good-looking Delhi girl but fails.
Ananya Panday tries to look the typical good-looking Delhi girl but fails.

A surprise comes in the form of Sunny Singh’s extended cameo post interval. However, it isn’t the Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety vibe that Kartik and Sunny share here.

While the music of the film had already made heads turn, Ankhiyon Se Goli Maare in the closing credit is a treat to watch. Do check out for the signature Govinda step.

Pati Patni Aur Woh is funny, watchable and problematic at places, but who intends to learn a message or two from a film that trivializes an issue like infidelity and make it sound funny?

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