Shubh Mangal Saavdhan

“Weddings are stressful… brings out the dysfunction in everyone… Perhaps this is the reason a traditional baaraat procession is composed of people who dance angrily, limbs flailing and faces contorted… Shubh Mangal Saavdhan is the cinematic equivalent of this dance; it encapsulates the clumsy chaos, egos and contradictions of this moment by dissecting the noise shaping it.”

Rating: 3 stars | Full review

“Indian families are a genre by themselves. Every single household here bears its own stamp of idiosyncrasy and fancifulness. Shubh Mangal Saavdhan‘s writer Hitesh Kawalya, a man of scintillating wit and astonishing eye for detail, recognises it deeply and breathes levity into everyday scenes.”

Rating: 4 stars | Full review

“A very gutsy role to pick for any performer (pun unintended), especially in mainstream films, where audiences often confuse the actor with the character itself—and an image is built around it.”

Rating: 3.5 stars | Full review

“Generally pleasant and inoffensive even when it directs sharp barbs at the social order that imposes its standard idea of mardangi on all men, without allowing space for the possibility of behavioural variations.”

Rating: 3 stars | Full review

“That an Indian storyteller might consider erectile dysfunction an issue because it would deny a woman sexual pleasure in her marriage – and not merely because of the social pressure she will inevitably face to beget heirs carrying forward her husband’s family line – is reason enough to sit up and take notice.”

Rating: 2.5 stars | Full review

“When you want to get it on, and you can’t get it up, what do you do? A Bollywood mainstream movie asking this kind of tricky question deserves serious props.”

Rating: 2.5 stars | Full review

“Who can argue with filmmakers hell-bent on trivialising issues of sexual debilitation through ridiculous slapstick… This film is replete with dialogues that are meant to be symbolic but sound awfully retrograde and degenerate. Imagine hearing the mother of the girl uttering words like ‘please help Alibaba get into the cave?’ as a plea to get her soon-to-be son-in-law sexually active again.”

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“There’s been a notable resurgence of middle cinema in the last few years, from Ankhon Dekhi to Bareilly Ki Barfi. Shubh Mangal Saavdhan fits snugly into this very Indian subgenre: its comedy is rooted in the everyday, its conflicts life-size.”

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