Zara Hatke Zara Bachke Movie Review: Doesn’t quite hit home

The Hindi movie Zara Hatke Zara Bachke is now showing across cinemas in the UAE. It is directed by Laxman Utekar and stars Vicky Kaushal, Sara Ali Khan, Neeraj Sood, Inamamulhaq, Sharib Hashmi, Rakesh Bedi, Sushmita Mukherjee.

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Where can you watch Zara Hatke Zara Bachke in the UAE?

Zara Hatke Zara Bachke is currently showing in cinemas across the UAE, such as VOX Cinema and Novo Cinemas. It will probably be a while before the film hits streaming services in the UAE.

Hindi movie Zara Hatke Zara Bachke Movie review

What is it with Indian filmmakers in recent times who seem to start off a film with a lot of fun and comedic elements, and somewhere down the line, they seem to develop cold feet and move on to some serious portions?

We saw this in the Malayalam film Thrishanku where the director did not go for the comic jugular even though it seemed available. And here in Zara Hatke Zara Bachke, too, director Laxman Utekar does not seem to have fully utilized laughter-inducing potential in the narrative. He seems to have opted for a play-safe approach that mutes the smiles and wit.

The story is about a young couple looking for a new house to escape the brood of family members who intrude into their privacy unwittingly. So they cook up a false story to get themselves eligible for a government house. The comedy of errors that follows has plenty of scope for more elaboration. But the director keeps it all a notch down, watering down a fun plot filled with oddball characters.

Kapil Dubey (Vicky Kaushal) and Sowmya Chawla (Sara Ali Khan) are a young couple in a family filled with whacky and eccentric members. This sets the mood for some breezy comedy till Sowmya makes a rookie Punjabi error as she serves a cake filled with eggs to the vegetarian folks. Naturally, the Punjabi bahu is singled out for taunts and jeers. As she starts feeling the heat, she wants to move out. But Kapil, a stingy middle-class man, cannot afford a house on their own. 

As it happens, a government scheme will allow them to get a house. But the hitch here is that Kapil’s family already has a house. This makes the couple ineligible for the scheme. Enter a scheming tout Bhagwan Das (Inaamulhaq), who promises to get them the house if they are no longer wife and husband. The duo cooks up fake stories and fights to make divorce for them a cinch. 

All comic hell should break loose, but the con job doesn’t lead anywhere, and instead, we get some feeble jokes and slapstick attempts that struggle to get you to smile.  The director Laxman Utekar, who has handled films like Luka Chuppi and Mimi, which had fake stories and fun twists at the core, is not exactly new to such a script. But he stops himself on the tracks inexplicably rather than mine the material on his hand for more laughs. 

Vicky Kaushal and Sara Ali Khan are adequate. The romance portions are fun, but it is as a comic couple that the timing seems to elude them. The side characters like the watchman (Sharib Hashmi), and Kapil’s loud aunt (Kanupriya Pandit) keep the humour quotient alive. But none of them hit home fully.