‘Pati Patni Aur Woh Do’ review: A curiously disengaged comedy

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Pati Patni Aur Woh Do belongs to that familiar subgenre of Hindi comedy where men create catastrophes through lies and cowardice, then expect applause for surviving the consequences. Ayushmann Khurrana plays Prajapati Pandey, a forest ranger introduced with the kind of exaggerated masculinity the film both mocks and indulges.

When on a mission to trap a roaming leopard in the environs of Prayagraj, where Mudassar Aziz locates the chaos, Prajapati is described as a “leopard Casanova.”Prajapati is a hero in the forest and a respected by his forest department colleagues. At hime, he has a solid and progressive relationship with his TV reporter wife Aparna (Wamiqa Gabbi).

But Praja’s real defining trait is a saviour complex so inflated that the screenplay never pauses to question it. He inserts himself into situations, concocts increasingly idiotic plans, and then spends the rest of the film scrambling through misunderstandings of his own making.

Every crisis emerges from ego, panic, sheer stupidity or a guilt trip, yet the film continues to treat him like an essentially noble fool. Why does he even get embroiled in college friend Chanchal Kumari’s (Sara Ali Khan) emotional drama involving a casteist politician Gajraj (Tigmanshu Dhulia) and his fairly benign son.The fourth character in this crazy dynamic is forest doctor Niloufer Khan (Rakul Preet Singh), who is besties with both Aparna and Prajapati.

For brief moments, the film seems interested in the possibility of a genuinely platonic friendship between Praja and Niloufer. But Hindi cinema still struggles to imagine emotional intimacy without romantic suspicion or possessiveness creeping in.This is Uttar Pradesh populated by stereotypes: