MovieNotes: Tanu Weds Manu Returns

Title: Tanu Weds Manu Returns

*ing: Kangana Ranaut (2 Nos.), Madhavan, Deepak Dobriyal, Jimmy Shergill, et al

Director: Aanand Rai

Language: Hindi in multiple dialects

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance

Basic Premise

Events take place after the “happy ending” from the 2011 movie “Tanu Weds Manu”. The married couple has fallen out of love and is trying to pick up the pieces of their lives in an attempt to move on. But these attempts only keep entangling them further as the husband falls in love with his wife’s look-alike.

MovieNotes

What Works

• Kangana Ranaut’s twin performances as Tanu and Kusum. Played so perfectly that you tend to forget that both are played by the same actor. Also credit to the make-ups team for making them look similar yet distinctly different, unlike most movies with double roles.
• The performances of the leading men fall into two broad categories – the understated ones, who are going with the flow (Madhavan & Jimmy Shergill) and the ones who keep the audience engaged with their over-the-top acts (Deepak Dobriyal & Mohhamed Zeeshan Ayyub). And both these types complement each other perfectly.
• Its the characters in tiny one scene roles which are remembered e.g. the divorce lawyer, the uncles translating club as gymkhana etc. 
• The One Liners - The one thing which keeps the movie going are the never ending one liners, from a "growing man" being compared to an adrak to the confused parents not sure whose side they were on by the time the story reaches its climax.
• Special mention for Swara Bhaskar’s Bihari accent take. Other film-makers please note, you need not try to make everything sound Bhojpuri, and this is the real accent you hear in Bihar.
• The prequel had better music but this one makes clever use of background songs to bring out the characters' inner angst perfectly. ("Old School Girl" for Kusum and "Ja, Ja bewafa" for Tanu)
• The movie actually manages to weave in a couple of nice social messages to up the overall feel-good factor.

What Doesn't

• As is wont with most stories these days, the ending seems a little contrived. However, I am not sure how they could have tied it up any better. Given that like some of the characters, even the audience wasn’t sure of which side they were on. 
• There was the needless saga of the Punjabi-Bihari couple’s baby which served no real purpose in the plot. 
• Sometimes logic takes a back seat and manages to slip through the plot-holes (e.g. Hindi speaking doctors counselling couples in a mental asylum in Britain, or the sudden disappearance of the kidnap victim). But the one-liners prevent you from thinking too badly for the lack of logic in certain acts.

Rating – 9/10. Overall a thoroughly entertaining laugh riot.

Previously on MovieNotes – Avengers: Age of Ultron