Roohi (2021) has consistently been compared to Stree, and that makes sense; they're both horror comedies that star Rajkummar Rao and feature subtle feminist themes despite the viewpoint characters all being men. Surprisingly, nobody ever mentions Roohi's other spiritual forbear, the 1997 Juhi Chawla farce Deewana Mastana.
The film opens with a series of cliched snippets of Indian village life, and we quickly learn why: it's a film within a film, a documentary being shot by an American (Alexx O'Neil) who is apparently named Tim. Tim is in Bagadpur to investigate the local custom of abduction marriages, in which a prospective groom has his intended bride kidnapped. There's no indication that the brides have any choice in the matter, but the villagers all shrug because that is the way it is done.
Tim's local guides are Bawra (Rajkummar Rao) and Kattani (Varun Sharma). In theory, they are reporters, but their boss Guniya (Manav Vij) also runs the local kidnapping ring, and doesn't really segregate his businesses. After Tim leaves, Bawra and Kattani receive a new assignment; the regular kidnappers are busy, so they are to go to the train station and kidnap Roohi (Janhvi).
The bride is duly carried away, but then Guniya calls again. The wedding has been delayed for a week, so Bawra and Kattani are supposed to hold her prisoner in an abandoned wood factory. This turns out to be a problem, because while Roohi is demure and soft-spoken, she is also occasionally possessed by Afza, a mudyapairi, or backwards footed ghost, who is brash, angry, and anything but demure. Afza died unwed, and will not leave Roohi until she can be married. In fact, there's a strict time limit; if Roohi doesn't marry within a year, Afza and Roohi will both die. In fact, the year is nearly up.
Bawra finds himself falling for Roohi. Meanwhile, Kattani is immediately smitten with Afza. It's almost a classic love triangle, except that our heroes are in love with two different women who happen to be occupying the same body, and neither of the women have shown any particular romantic interest in them, and also there's the whole kidnapping thing. And now I need to talk about Deewana Mastana.
In Deewana Mastana, Juhi Chawla plays Neha, a psychiatrist who is romantically pursued by both her patient Bunnu (Govinda) and a streetwise thief named Raja (Anil Kapoor.) Throughout the movie, Bunnu and Raja try to one-up each other in an escalating series of vicious pranks, all to determine who gets to win Neha. However, they don't consult Neha at any point, and she ignores them and marries Salman Khan instead, which is the only way that particular love triangle could resolve itself if Neha is to have any agency at all.
Bawra and Kattani are not as terrible as Bunnu and Raja. I wouldn't credit either one of them with a heart of gold, but Bawra does genuinely want to help Roohi, Kattani wants Afza to be free to rampage wherever she wants, and they're both willing to take risks to protect Roohi and Afza when Guniya decides that the wedding is back on. But in the end, this is a story that revolves around consent, and it can't really end with a woman happily marrying one or both of her kidnappers. The story does not end with Roohi marrying Salman Khan, but the actual resolution is even better.
Roohi is billed as a horror comedy with romantic elements. It's not particularly scary, it's sporadically funny, and it's certainly not romantic, but it is consistently interesting and includes a trip to a village of exorcists.
No comments:
Post a Comment