Mere Husband Ki Biwi is not unfunny and the jokes are not in poor taste either. But when part of the premise of the film is a divorce based on a woman prioritising her career among other things, then it becomes a little harder, as a woman, to laugh at it.
Arjun Kapoor’s Ankur Chaddha is an entitled Delhi rich boy (the film doesn’t think he is) who is haunted by his disaster of a marriage to his college sweetheart Prabhleen Dhillon (Bhumi Pednekar) even two years after the divorce. Prabhleen, in Ankur’s dreams, is a crazy woman capable of murder, and his fear of her ruins his chances of relationships in the present.
The exception to this is Antara Khanna (Rakul Preet Singh), the popular college girl who is now a physiotherapist. She goes on a disastrous hang-gliding trip with Ankur and falls in love with him. Unfortunately, Prabhleen has an accident, loses her memory and forgets that Ankur and she are divorced. The two women then vie for Ankur’s attention, which leads to all kinds of hijinks.
What one fails to understand is how director Mudassar Aziz expects us to not only root for Ankur once we hear Prabhleen and Ankur’s story but also understand why Antara doesn’t run for the hills once she hears the same story and why Prabhleen still wants him even after she remembers their divorce.
When Prabhleen, a journalist, just wanted to do her job peacefully without being disturbed by incessant calls for inane reasons from her mother-in-law and makes up excuses to get out of a kitty party because of a headache, our charming Delhi ka munda tells her to adjust with ‘mummy’. Ankur, who doesn’t seem to work, acts like a spoilt child and goes to stay with his parents because Prabhleen gets delayed at work.
The most unbelievable part is that when they are pregnant and she has an accident while covering a rally, he storms into her office, manhandles her boss and clears out her desk without her knowledge, refuses to answer her calls and then comes back in the morning to apologise for overreacting. Prabhleen aborts the baby and their marriage ends.
None of the above feels like a glowing recommendation for an ideal husband and yet the two women go round and round, trying to win his affection. The film focuses on Ankur’s heartbreak about the abortion but passes it off as willfulness on the part of the woman, never once addressing the desperation or the heartbreak that made her take such a decision.
To be fair to the women, Bhumi and Rakul Preet have more chemistry with each other than they do with the hero. Bhumi has a blast playing the boisterous and wild Punjaban, and Rakul Preet is as cool as a cucumber as the more sophisticated woman. Arjun does his best but it is difficult to like his character whose only saving grace is his “minority se hoon” best friend Rehan Qureshi (Harsh Gujral), who actually makes his jokes land like a pro (not surprising given that he is a stand-up comic in real life). The rest of the cast doesn’t have much to contribute except funny one-liners. Dino Morea, who shows up as Antara’s brother, is given a solid entry but surprisingly nothing much to do.
Mere Husband Ki Biwi, whose songs are hardly memorable for the soundtrack to be mentioned, does have a few moments towards the end where the characters somewhat redeem themselves, but sitting through the rest of the film to get to the end point may not be worth it. If you like loud movies with an underlying regressive view, then a trek to the theatres may be worth your time. Else wait for it to hit an OTT platform and watch it when you have nothing better to do.