TLDR: If you have seen the latest Ranbir and Shraddha Kapoor, “Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar” (TJMM), my condolences to you! If you haven’t, please don’t waste 2h 30m of your time on this headache of a film.
I watched TJMM on a night where I wanted to take it easy and indulge in a guilty pleasure. I expected an engaging rom-com, I got a disappointing one. Let me tell you why!
Director Luv Ranjan is back with yet another cringefest that has a young, virile, heterosexual, boorish, north Indian man-child at its centre. Why am I not surprised? Except this time it is not Kartik Aaryan, it is Ranbir Kapoor (aka Mickey). Not that it matters… Because if you close your eyes and listen to a tirade by Mickey, it may as well be Rajat from “Pyaar Ka Punchnama”.
Mickey is the son of an affluent business family from Delhi, who secretly breaks up couples painlessly, with his best friend Manu (stand up comedian Anubhav Singh Bassi), as a side hustle. They are like a Punjabi-Haryanvi Jai-Veeru duo, if you will.
Kapoor tries his best to make you laugh, but to tell you the truth, most of the comic relief is shouldered by Manu and Sweetu, Mickey’s business-minded, young niece.
Moving along, Mickey falls in love with Manu’s wife’s best friend, Tinni, played by Shraddha Kapoor. But, he also loves his family and wants to live with them, while Tinni is a career-oriented, young woman who values her independence above all else. A Hindi cinema tale as old as time…
While the central characters and plot points are nothing new, I enjoyed the portrayal of Punjabi families in the film. Dimple Kapadia takes the cake as the overbearing Punjabi mother. I was surprised to see Boney Kapoor play the father, not that he said or did anything unforgettable.
Will Mickey and Tinni reconcile their differences or will her selfishness force them apart? If you can’t guess how the film ends by now, you clearly haven’t watched enough cringey Bollywood films (good for you!).