The Wife Collector:
There seems to be no earthly reason to exhume Kis Kis Ko Pyaar Karoon (2015), but a part two is here, recycling the plot of the first film, with some changes. Abbas-Mustan who had directed the earlier film return as producers. Anukalp Goswami, who wrote it (inspired by a Ray Cooney farce, Run For Your Wife), directs this one. Kapil Sharma, who had made his film debut with that film, has acquired a kind of stardom since, and a more polished appearance. Three of the four actresses who played his wives, have all but vanished from the scene. The question the protagonist, forced into multiple marriages, had asked at the end. “What happened to me… was it a tragedy or a comedy, ” remains unanswered. Or the answer could be, depends on the viewers taste in movies.
In the interim decade, a lot happened in society, that gives this otherwise silly faux comedy an added edge—the over sensitivity about religious matters, reduced tolerance for injustice against women, and the violence inter-religious marriages can unleash. Perhaps without meaning to, Kis Kis Ko Pyaar Karoon 2 cocks a snook at the current woke mode.
Bhopal restauranteur, Mohan (Kapil Sharma), is in love with a Muslim girl, Saniya (Hira Warina), but their attempts to marry are thwarted by their fathers. They could, of course, have eloped to another city, since they are way over 18 and money is obviously not in short supply, but who can question the logic of a film like this? In desperation, Mohan tells Saniya’s father (Vipin Sharma) that he will convert to Islam and take the name Mehmood; but unaware of this, Saniya runs away, leaving a cousin, Roohi (Ayesha Khan) in her place, whom he ends up marrying.
Mohan’s father (Akhilendra Mishra), gets him married to Meera (Tridha Choudhury) after rendering him unconscious. Both women silence Mohan’s protests by threatening suicide. Saniya calls to tell him she has gone to Goa and converted to Christianity. Mohan, accompanied by his Sikh friend Habbi (Manjot Singh), reaches the church where he is to marry her, and ends up with a Catholic bride, Jenny (Parul Gulati), who has been abandoned at the altar, by pretending to be Michael. To make his life tougher, the other two wives befriend each other in Goa. Two activists from a “Majnu Bhagao, Ladki Bachao” group (Jamie Lever, Trupti Khamkar) are on the prowl in Goa, and hearing the woman call Habbi, think he is the bigamist, adding to the confusion.
When Mohan returns to Bhopal, he has to juggle three wives, two sets of baffled parents, Jenny’s cop brother, David (Sushant Singh), who has come to investigate after being informed by a priest (Asrani) about an unseen man who confessed to three marriages (aren’t priests sworn to secrecy?) Then, an amnesiac Saniya is adopted by a Sikh family and Mohan becomes Manjeet Singh to marry her.
Two of the women have careers, but do not suspect anything amiss when their husband rushes about behaving suspiciously, does not share a whole day or night with them, and the friend is always around helping him to get out of scrapes.
Bigamy laws do not even come into the picture, and the lying-cheating Mohan is extolled as a saviour of these four desperate women who would die if he didn’t marry them. Like in the earlier film all four accept the situation and the shared husband.
The comic pace is maintained, and Mohan’s constant deception does get to him—he comes to Jenny’s birthday party with a tilak in his forehead, because of a pooja in the Hindu home. He has to avoid eating, because he has promised the Muslim wife to observe the roza fast.
The actors—particularly Kapil Sharma, Manjot Singh and Vipin Sharma– have superb comic timing, and some of the lines have a rapid-fire, spontaneous feel to them. The film, unfortunately, is dated and ludicrous. But then there is this tiny modicum of satire like a spark in the gloom. Mohan gives a speech saying that as an Indian he accepts all religions, only to be asked, “Do you think you are the Constitution?”
(This piece first appeared in scroll.in)
