Mudassar Aziz’s Khel Khel Mein is an untameable beast of a film. It is funny, yes. But it is also very sad. It reveals the secrets that are locked in our hearts, or rather in our phones, and how we cannot allow the phone to rule our hearts. That unlimited freedom on the phone is actually a terrible slavery to technology that is destroying lives.
All these ideas are not hammered into the script. Rather, Aziz and his co-writer Sara Brodinar, play a perky precious you-show-me-yours-I’ll-show-you-mine peek-a-boo game of infidelity, creating spaces in confined rooms for intelligent dialogue on how far couples need to respect one another’s space in marriages.
This is assuredly Mudassar Aziz’s most intelligent work, though not all of it works. Akshay Kumar’s roving-eyed oversmart character is a trimmer version of Sanjeev Kumar in Pati Patni Aur Woh.
Perhaps Kumar feels greying his hair in neat streaks gives colour to his middleaged character. Slow applause for preparation. But really, to call him George Clooney, as Taapsee does, is really too much.
Akshay looks smug and bored playing Rishab Malik, a man who is married to a woman half his age and who has a 18-year old daughter from a previous marriage whom he advises—in what is clearly meant to be Akshay’s BIG MOMENT—to have sex with her boyfriend if she really wants to, and not just to appear ‘cool’.
This misfired portrait of ideal parenting apart , Khel Khel Mein is interesting for its tongue-in-cheek study of toxic marriages. All the male protagonists , Akshay Kumar, Amy Virk, Aditya Seal are rude and patronizing to their wives Vaani Kapoor, Taapsee Pannu and Pragya Jaiswal.
Rude retorts are in fact, the order of the day. If you are not a fan of budtameez conversations, then this may not be your poison this weekend.
But make no mistake: Khel Khel Mein is elegantly designed. With due apologies to Akshay Kumar, cinematographer Manoj Kumar Khatoi, is the real star of show. He confers a restless glamour on every frame, portraying these privileged people with a pinch of anxiety and dollops of selfdelusion.
The actors are surprisingly dedicated to the task at hand. Taapsee Pannu, in a role that Divya Dutta would have done in a OTT version of this film, excels as a clueless Punjabi housewife trying hard to pretend that her husband is okay, trying harder to make a baby with him.
Fardeen Khan makes a comeback as a sports coach whose well-kept secret about his sexuality is out before the evening is done. It is a complex part , and Fardeen is up to it. How you wish there was more gravitas to the dishy discourse on relationship issues.
The film bears a basic plotting likeness to two films, the Italian Perfect Strangers and Jeethu Joseph’s Malayalam 12th Man. Eventually, Khel Khel Mein is its own beast, best judged for what it sets out to do than what it finally achieves.
One more thing: that exceedingly annoying remix of the evergreen Asha Bhosle hit Parde mein rehne do could have been avoided. Why set up unnecessary road signs in a journey into the unknown?
