Mere Husband Ki Biwi collapses into an unremarkable My Best Friend's Wedding knock-off reducing a woman's worth to a catfight, observes Sukanya Verma.
Between done-to-death tropes and flimsily updated ones, Mere Husband Ki Biwi sticks to ancient formulae yet gives a semblance of keeping up with the times only to confirm that old habits die hard.
In Mudassar Aziz's routine rom-com, a divorcee dangles between his fiery ex and doting fiancée sparking off a battle for one-upmanship.
It starts like a cheesy David Dhawan comedy salvaged by Govinda's inimitable lunacy back in the day and advances into a My Best Friend's Wedding rehash sans the deliciousness of Julia Roberts and Cameron Diaz's jell-o pitted against creme brulee.
Except this return to the 1990s style of whimsy evokes more nausea than nostalgia with its drab humour and out of sync performances.
Once again, Delhi-based Punjabi boys and girls are in the fray of this burned-out love triangle, which begins with Piyush Mishra's frantic voiceover on how the shaadi sucks syndrome has sapped the life out of Ankur Chaddha (Arjun Kapoor) haunted by ex-wife Prableen Dhillon's (Bhumi Pednekar) ghostly memories.
She's alive and amnesiac, selectively of course, which proves to be a glitch in his upcoming wedding to Antara Khanna (Rakul Singh) since in her head, Prableen's still happily married to Ankur.
Replace Julia Robert's jealous BFF instincts with Mera ex-Pati Sirf Mera Hai obduracy and forgotten pacts with retrograde amnesia and Mere Husband Ki Biwi collapses into an unfunny, unremarkable My Best Friend's Wedding knock-off reducing a woman's worth to a catfight while the guy coolly tells her off at every opportunity.
As much as one appreciates Mudassar Aziz's efforts to keep the hysterics down, a rarity for such a premise, the tug of war he's conducting has its roots so deep in soap opera energy, the restrained approach rarely works until subverted to produce sharp, self-aware humour.
Tossing Israel-Palestine or Russia-Ukraine war references as casually as blinking eyelids, cheeping Naatu Naatu like a euphemism for bam wham thank you ma'am or the sight of a man puking, girl giggling and love is in the air-announcing romantic ballads playing on cue is certainly not a step in the right direction.
Nor is a cast ill-equipped to lift the material from hmm to heh.
Harsh Gujral pitches in the mandatory expressionless standup comic turned one-liner muttering best friend to the hero.
Speaking of which, Arjun Kapoor pays several hat tips to Shah Rukh Khan's romantic antics but neither his smitten kitten ardour nor straightforward sulking works for Mere Husband Ki Biwi's innately roguish vibe.
Rakul Singh's saucy pout and Bhumi Pednekar's hammy display channel Raveena Tandon and Karisma Kapoor's rivalry of sass but cannot muster the emotional excesses that came so organically to the '90s divas.
Mostly though, it's a pity to watch Bhumi's jumbled character description jumping from career-obsessed to chudail for no apparent reason across Mere Husband Ki Biwi's deceptively sober prism.
The ultimate male fantasy isn't gone anywhere.
From men dancing between women ready to claw each other's eyes out for his attention to women proposing to women on behalf of the men they love or lose, if anything, it's unlocked new levels.
© 2025