Zara Hatke Zara Bachke Review

In Laxman Utekar's Zara Bachke Zara Hatke, Vicky Kaushal and Sara Ali Khan play Kapil and Saumya, a young couple frustrated with living in a cramped house alongside their extended family. The nights are the worst. Sleeping in the living room, where Kapil's kid brother frequently intrudes on their privacy, they secretly plot to get a place of their own. Unable to afford an apartment by the usual means, they cast their luck on a government subsidy scheme, which set them on a twisted path, involving a fake divorce that puts their real marriage at risk.

It's not the premise of Zara Bachke Zara Hatke that is mundane; rather, it's the lacklustre script that fails to captivate. For instance, take the hare-brained plan to pursue a fake divorce, a scam that is suggested by an obvious fraudster. It is instantly obvious how this farce will play out: they get swindled and caught, and along the way, their deceit erodes their own relationship. And so it does.

There are also ignominious jokes about Kapil being gay or impotent. And a juvenile sequence wherein Saumya hides in the bushes with foliage stuck into her hair and takes photos of Kapil pretending to have an affair with their neighbour. Why won't they just bring this poor girl in on their plan? Just so the movie can wriggle in a few moments of slapstick humour, the kind only a time traveler from the 1980s might enjoy.

The laggard pace of the film, and the over-sentimentality of the story, also make it feel anachronistic. In song sequences, instead of running around trees, Kapil and Saumya are frolicking in palace hallways, with Saumya dreamily trailing her fingers along frescoes.

There is so little that is artistically exciting in Zara..., and such scarcity of imagination or boldness in the writing, that a feeling of resignment takes over you. At one point early in the movie, Kapil and Saumya are eating out when Saumya points to a bird's nest in a nearby tree. Kapil tries to get someone to get rid of it, but Saumya draws out a tired metaphor about how the nest is "someone's home".

Adding to the dreary vibes is Sara Ali Khan's Shakespearean portrayal of Saumya. Surrounded by competent actors, particularly those playing Kapil's extended family, Sara's hammy performance sticks out, and eviscerates the mood of most scenes she is in. And next to Vicky Kaushal, whose performance ranks leagues above hers, she is close to unwatchable.

Zara... does its worst at the end. As a general observation, I find that stories where someone gets rushed to a hospital, prompting an instant transformation in a character's attitude, is a sign of lazy writing. Zara... not only embraces this trope, it then follows it up with a conclusion that is so laughably stupid that I thought it was a prank.

It's hard to label Zara as an outright bad movie. It is just super-boring. So boring in fact that I wished it were bad just so I could feel something.