Sanket’s Review: “Shaadi Ke Side Effects” is repetitive.

Cast: Farhan Akhtar, Vidya Balan, Ram Kapoor, Vir Das.

Director: Saket Chahudhary

Length: 2.25 hours approximately

Husband-wife rivalries are drawing room discussions even among the teenagers. The writer of this film tries to pack all these routine marriage oriented banters in a comic form and tries to give a layer to the whole film by adding underplayed emotions. But what the film lacks is a coherent screenplay which is rather repetitive. The film moves round and round in a loop and at one point we realize that there’s not much the film has to say. It is given that the writer ran out of ideas post-intermission which is why uncooked characters of Vir das and Ila Arun are added but unfortunately they only adds to the already long run-time.

The film’s tone is pretty simple and one the film coasts along with enough subtlety. Some episodes particularly are laugh-riots. Some dialogues are so humorous that you want to forgive films some of its flaws. But SHAADI KE SIDE EFFECTS has no realness in its screenplay. The marriage depicted in the film is partly relatable but mostly imaginative and overdone.

Even in second half the pace is bumpy. The Vir Das plot exhausts the audience because of its irrelevance to the central part of the film. Although there are lot of social and influential ideas stuffed beneath the pronounced humor and unmoving emotions, but all those ideas never comes off full-fledged. Although some scenes does hits the nail like the one where Farhan’s daughter asks him to not to cry and cleans his tears. But unfortunately very rarely does the film displays such immense maturity.

The songs are passable, with “Desi Romance” remaining the best. “Harry is not bhramchari” has peppy tune but pops in untimely. The dialogues are sharp enough at places to evoke smiles and laughter. Although the script is too flawed to put the film in right place. The film takes a haywire route to convey a story that’s exploited a lot of times. Even Saket Chaudhary couldn’t do much to the film apart from ensuring a winning act from AKhtar.

That brings me to the best thing about the film, Farhan AKhtar, who walks a thin line between comedy and drama and does it terrifically. Vidya Balan lends a balance support to the film and she reaches a peak-point in couple of scenes.

In the end, I wish the film played more with conversational episodes rather than forced comedy and drama. I enjoyed it in some bits and spurts, but I was disappointed for sure.

Rating – 2/5