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FILM REVIEW: Murder Mubarak

This ain’t no mystery Cast: Dimple Kapadia, Pankaj Tripathi, Karishma Kapoor, Sara Ali Khan, Sanjay Kapoor, Grusha Kapoor, Deven Bhojwani,...


This ain’t no mystery

Cast: Dimple Kapadia, Pankaj Tripathi, Karishma Kapoor, Sara Ali Khan, Sanjay Kapoor, Grusha Kapoor, Deven Bhojwani, Tisca Chopra, Aashim Gulati, Brijendra Kala, Varun Mitra, Priyank Tiwary

Rating: 2*

Streaming on: Netflix

Murder Mubarak starts with a murder and a hunt for Prince Harry a cat at the elite Delhi Royal Club. Only it turns out that the murder victim Guppie Ram (Brijendra Kala) an elderly club employee has only passed out not passed on! That sets the note for Homi Adajania’s latest oeuvre based on Anuja Chauhan’s book “Club You To Death”. Aha!! but there IS a twist  - the leacherous gym trainer Leo Mathews (Aashim Gulati) has been done in and that too at his workspace.

Arrives ACP Bhawani Singh (Pankaj Tripathi) to investigate the murder with SI Padam Kumar (Priyank Tiwary) in tow. Only to discover that the motley collection of characters he has been assigned to talk to ALL have an axe to grind with the far from dear and departed soul. Turns out the bloke was making money on the side by blackmailing the suspects, yes, all of them.

There’s the flamboyant Raja Saheb Rannvijay Singh (a scruffy not in form Sanjay Kapoor) who seems to be living in his glorious past, palming off dirty 20 rupee notes as bakshish to the orderlies at the club;  Bambi Todi (Sara Ali Khan) the bewitching merry widow of Anshul (Varun Mitra) the self-righteous catty and bitching brigade led by Roshni Batra (Tisca Chopra) Cookie Katoch (Dimple Kapadia) who is always cooking up a storm with her wisecracks; Shehnaaz Noorani (Karishma Kapoor looking like a million bucks in her comeback) a B grade actress working in C grade movies. Roshni’s recovering addict son Yash (Suhail Nayyar) and lawyer Kashi aka Aakash Dogra (Vijay Verma) the heartbroken ex of Bambi make up the rest of the usual suspects.

As ACP Bhawani Singh traverses through the lives of these colourful club members he starts unraveling many a truth and concludes that it could have been anyone or every one of them. To complicate matters a skeleton turns up in the kitchen garden, and two suicide attempts take place, one of them successful. And as for poor Prince Harry, well, he lands up in the oven….just baked…

The problem with Murder Mubarak is the wafer-thin plot, the snail speed, a screenplay that is all over the place, and Homi’s inability to actually cash in on the talented lineup of actors who signed up for the project. What a criminal waste.

There is a perplexed look on most of the faces of the characters as if they have wandered in on to the wrong sets and once having been trapped tried to make the best of a bad job. And full marks to them for braving their way through the muddle. An unnecessary love-making scene featuring Sara and Vijay certainly doesn't help to keep off the snores either.

By the time the ACP assembles all the suspects at the club a la Poirot for the big reveal, you really couldn’t care less who killed whom and why.



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