Sab Kushal Mangal

Sab Kushal Mangal wastes too much time on its uninspiring leads, both of whom are offspring of Bollywood talent (Riva is Ravi Kishan’s daughter, while Priyaank is the son of Padmini Kolhapure and Tutu Sharma). Mandira doesn’t quite possess the heart-stopping charms that would sway an experienced gent like Babu, just as Priyaank isn’t exactly heart-throb material. It takes the rest of the more experienced cast to drag the 132-minute Hindi heartland comedy to the finishing line. Satish Kaushik is a scream as Pappu’s hapless father, while Ishtiyak Khan is also entertaining as Babu’s dim-witted factotum. The maximum fun is had by Akshaye Khanna, playing up the stereotype of the Uttar Pradesh criminal-politician. Khanna’s Babu enlivens the movie whenever he appears, which isn’t as often as it needed to be, and his absence is sorely felt.

First-time director Karan Vishwanath Kashyap has done a good job of making a cute rom-com that falters only during the last 15 minutes in its 134 minutes length.

What happens thereafter –a romantic triangle of sorts--is fun in the early parts but post-interval, the stretch in the wafer-thin plots begins to show. There are convenient resolutions to the central conflict and pretty soon everything turns predictable. Writers Brijendra Kala and Karan Kashyap fail to infuse the script with adequate comedy for a two hour- plus run.

Pity because both debutants (she is the daughter of Ravi Kisan, he is the son of Padmini Kolhapure, both solid actors) have a confident presence. And Khanna, lips characteristically pursed, shuttling between small-town-goon decked out in white-on-white-pant-shirt and a made-over metro type desperately trying to sip black coffee, is laugh-out-loud funny in places.