14 Phere

Rather than playing the cake-wanting-and-eating-too business as a rip-roaring farce, Devanshu Singh’s film treats the couple’s efforts to stay together as an observational comedy. Manoj Kalwani’s screenplay struggles to extract humour from casteist attitudes and the willingness of elders to slaughter defiant family members. Jameel Khan and Gauahar Khan, as Sanjay and Aditi’s fake parents, are not much help in generating the laughs either. Gauahar Khan’s Zubina is especially unconvincing as a matriarch who looks about the same age as Aditi. In a less pretentious production, much more would have been made of Zubina’s patently fake wig and youthful skin tone. The dullness of the leads further contributes to the overall sluggishness. Vikrant Massey works harder than is required, while Jameel Khan, who is too gifted for this sort of thing, is wasted as the duplicate dad who cringes at Zubina’s hamminess. He isn’t the only one.

Bit characters come and go in this convoluted plot. Sanjay’s cousin does a nice job of a cocky young lad. Aditi’s brother is good at bluster. Gauahar Khan leaps off the screen, even in her limited, sadly unfleshed role. Some of the accents are spot on. But between the long-drawn, wholly preposterous idea of fake ‘baraatis’, and two ‘shaadis’ (therefore, ‘chaudah phere’, geddit), there’s just confusion. And the whole comes off as plain tiresome.

Even the predictable climax that ensures a ceasefire between warring parties seems more out of fatigue than anything more. 14 Phere is the kind of film one can still watch but will find very hard to truly care about.