‘Bhool Chuk Maaf’ movie review: Rajkummar Rao and Wamiqa Gabbi light up this timely parable

Rajkummar Rao, Wamiqa Gabbi

In the story of Satyanarayan, an important multi-stranded tale in religious storytelling in Indian homes, the protagonists tend to forget the noble deed they promise when they seek a blessing or a favour from the Almighty. But God has His ways to remind the faithful of the unkept vows.

Cutting through a web of rituals, writer-director Karan Sharma brings the message of this timeless katha to theatres with a modern-day parable. A rollicking social commentary laced with a layer of magic realism, Bhool Chuk Maaf makes a sharp comment on the growing schism in society where goodness and compassion are often measured on a scale of religious identity, where the goal corrupts our action even when the Bhagavad Gita is invoked on a daily basis.

Underlining the everyday hypocrisy where practice and preaching don’t often match, the film begins in Banaras among Tiwaris, Dwivedis, and Pandeys. Ranjan (Rajkummar Rao) loves Titli (Wamiqa Gabbi). Caste and religion are not an issue. The problem is more immediate. Ranjan is jobless, and the girl’s father wants a groom with a government job. In the race against time, Ranjan bribes Mahadev in the temple and Bhagwan Das (Sanjay Mishra), an endearing fixer, outside.

Things seem to fall in place, but on the wedding day, Ranjan finds himself caught in a time loop. The poor boy repeatedly wakes up on the day of his Haldi ceremony. Soon, we discover that Sharma is not just making fun of the Haldi ceremony, which has become the most significant wedding ritual for the youth. There is more to it than situational humour. Banaras has more to it than just Brahmin surnames, that unemployment is not community-centric, and that doing the right thing is not always the most acceptable thing socially.

The best part is that Sharma makes us believe in his leap of faith for a while. The trap of the time loop feels realistic, for we don’t learn from our mistakes and allow history to repeat itself. Curiously, after Operation Sindoor, it seemed that the film’s release would also get stuck like its protagonist’s love life, but the producers quickly fulfilled their pre-release promises.

Returning to Ranjan and Titli, the vernacular jokes and jibes hit the right notes, and Rajkummar and Wamiqa seamlessly merge into the Banarasi setting. Titli has more agency than Ranjan, but Sharma doesn’t turn their romance into a feminist exercise and presents both with their faults and prejudices. Usually, heroes, heroines, and the supporting cast seem to inhabit disparate worlds in modern-day rom-coms set in rurban locales. Here, if seasoned players like Seema Pahwa, Raghubir Yadav, Vineet Kumar, and Sanjay Mishra stitch a relatable social tapestry, Rajkummar and Wamiqa become the warp and weft in it.

Wamiqa lives up to her character’s name. Livewire with a sense of purpose, like many talented outsiders, Wamiqa’s career is clogged in the labyrinthine Bollywood talent lines that remain jammed because of the film family ward quota system. Like a butterfly, her talent, it seems, has finally found an outlet in the big sea. In contrast, Rajkummar Rao, another outsider, is seafaring after years of struggle. Of course, he is attempting to repeat the box office gains made with Stree in Vicky Vidya Ka Woh Wala Video and here. But, for now, he is in a Bhool Chuk Maaf kind of space often reserved for a star. He should be careful with his everyman charm as it can easily turn into a slippery slope, as we discovered with Ayushmann Khurrana. However, Rajkummar has an edge over his contemporaries because he can dig deeper to be a Shahid or a Newton any day.

The time loop is the crux of the story, but the trick is not to let it fall into a rut. After a lively build-up, which was reflected in the trailer, Sharma seems a bit insecure about how the big reveal will land and overwrites the portion. The jokes start overspeaking to keep the levity intact, making it an increasingly laboured exercise towards the denouement.

For a story that demands a certain lightness of touch, the makers don’t really trust the audience and pad it with an unnecessarily heavy background score. The song and dance sequences remain utterly bland despite names like Irshad Kamil and Tanishk Bagchi in the credits. So much so that Maddock has to recycle Irshad’s gem from Love Aaj Kal to send the audience home humming Chor Bazari. On OTT, the audience remains in a Bhool Chuk Maaf mode but becomes the Almighty in theatres where it doesn’t ignore unkept promises!

Bhool Chuk Maaf is currently running in theatres