Yawn from the heart

Mixed Doubles
Cast: Ranvir Sheorey (woe), Konkona Sen Sharma (wow)
Direction: Rajat Kapoor

That itch is the hitch. Bored of his ten-year-old married life, he’s desperate to stray from his sharbati-sweet wife. Strife. Once in a while, she threatens to slice his Shakti Kapoorish pajama naada with a kitchen knife. Aawooo?

Not XXXactly. Rajat Kapoor’s Mixed Doubles isn’t  as lowbrow as a David Dhawan sexathon. In fact, this modestly-budgeted comedy on middle class foibles has some minor virtues going for it: real locations and real domestic banter courtesy dialoguewallah Anurag Kashyap. 

ALAS, what this effort sorely lacks are real people you could warm up to. Indeed the libidinous lalloo (Ranvir Sheorey, absolutely off-putting) is a Jerk No. 1. Grrrr.
Suddenly aware of  the ding dong-do called “wife swapping” (was he living Mowgli-like in the jungles or what?), he obsesses on locating sex partners for himself and his washing machine-addicted biwi (Konkona Sen Sharma).Soapy dopey.

Plenty of screenplay loopholes here. Instead of investigating a swap club, which he has been informed about by an NRI American pal, he logs on to the internut.The wife is dismayed, skedaddles to her wacko dad (Naseeruddin Shah who launches into a blah-blooh sermonette).

Wife then sheds  glycerine tears at a hospital ward where Libido has been admitted for faked high blood pressure. Uh huh, she finally grinlights the swap game, already flogged to death in  in every second French film festival menage a quatre. Yawn.

Honestly, you don’t care a fig about the ninny couple or their freshly discovered high society playmates (Koel Purie  kinky, plus director saab smoking  hazaar cigarettes). Puff. Next: the quartet  dithers in an apartment remarkable more for its blue and red walls than for its pale occupants. Rang de colourless?

By this point, you’ve fathomed that the doubles entendre doodad is strictly about titillating fourplay. Ultimately,Rajat Kapoorji is as uptight, conservative and hypocritical as a pundit who doesn’t practise what he preaches.

Compared to this flaccid stuff, his earlier Raghu Romeo was a Gone with the Wind. Redeemingly, you do marvel at Rafey Mahmood’s camerawork which achieves a stylish look with meagre resources.

As for the sidebar characters like the smutty joke-cracking office colleague (Hennaed Hair), the couple’s balloon tossing kid (Moppet Gubbara) and an Agony Uncle (Saurabh Shukla wasted), they’re as irritating as a nattering neighbour who rings your doorbell post-midnight.

Expecting you to believe that Konkona Sen Sharma is a long-married hausfrau is like claiming Sania Mirza is a great grandmum.

Despite the miscasting, Ms Sharma is the only bright spot in an a-moral, immoral, whatever tale that’s close to a power failure. Sad.