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Title: Khel Khel Mein
Director: Mudassar Aziz
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Ammy Virk, Taapsee Pannu, Vaani Kapoor, Fardeen Khan, Aditya Seal and Pragya Jaiswal
Where: In theatres
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Rating: 3.5 stars
First, the candid confession! One walks into the theatre without much expectation from Mudassar Aziz's directorial venture titled Khel Khel Mein and walks out rewarded with a daringly hatke storyline replete with a generous dollop of humour. While the usual suspects—Akshay Kumar and Taapsee Pannu—sparkle with their incredible comic timing, Fardeen Khan too looks impressive in this one.
If you have seen the trailer, you will know how the story unfolds. A bunch of friends with their spouses reunite only to see themselves play an unusual 'cellphone' game. The task is apparently simple. Anybody and everybody will have full access to each other's cellphones for a night. The incoming calls and the streaming messages should be heard and read in everybody's presence—that's the mandate! What looks like a fun (read: albeit a risque) game at the beginning quickly turns into a rather serious scenario where everybody's deep secrets, insecurities, sexual fantasies, obsessions, ambitions and limitations start tumbling out, only to reveal who these individuals really are right to the core.
The makers take their time to set the pieces on board. There's a gala event, some flashbacks and a couple of flashy songs that drag the narrative. The punchlines look rehearsed and the sequences look choreographed. But once the dice start rolling, so to speak, you feel engaged in what looks like a silly but hilariously engaging game. In one scene, Taapsee's friend calls her from her hometown—mind you, the call has to be answered by employing the speakerphone—only to use the adjectives Taapsee uses for her friends behind their back. The scene is as hilarious as it is deliciously dark—revealing everybody's insecurities and the tendency to judge one another. "Yahan par sachme koi kisika friend hai kya?" goes the dialogue by a hapless character to make a sharp commentary on human relationships and their true nature.
In another instance, Akshay Kumar's character encounters a situation where he has to address a rather delicate situation by letting his teenage daughter decide if she can experience her first intimate experience with her newly minted boyfriend. The lines are brilliantly written and beautifully enacted by Akki as he deals with a situation maturely.
Soon, the situation starts getting intense and rather serious, as more calls and messages lead to the slipping of the masks, which leads to heartbreaks, brawls and more commotions. But now it is too late to stop the game! It must go on till it reaches its conclusion—logical or otherwise!
Mudassar Aziz quickly shifts gears in terms of genre transition. What looks like an out-and-out silly comedy turns into a drama and one starts wondering how the loose ends are tied up in the end! But the film concludes on a fine note.
On the face of it, Khel Khel Mein looks like a fun tale, but when looked at closely with the underlying subtexts, the film tells you who we are truly by revealing what we tend to hide the most. Blurring the lines between what can be termed as private and public, this film is a joyride you must dare to take with your spouse at your own risk!
These are not just secretive text messages, images, videos and phone calls that the makers highlight to evoke laughs; these are the undercurrents of the various facets of human psychology at play coupled with the conditioning and behavioural patterns that come to the fore, and the makers use humour as a tool to set the narrative progress.
As for the performances, Akshay Kumar leads from the front and is at absolute ease with his character, as indeed with the punchlines that come along. Taapsee Pannu not only plays the loud Punjabi lady who is often neglected by her husband well but watch how brilliantly she voice-acts to convey complex emotions. Ammy Virk, Pragya Jaiswal and Aditya Seal have done a decent job, while Fardeen Khan looks impressive as he switches between charming, being restrained and expressive traits effortlessly.
Khel Khel Mein will test your patience for the first twenty minutes, with the humour coming across as rather frothy and juvenile if not forced initially, but once the 'Khel' begins, the sheer honesty and reality of it will keep you invested. Full marks to the makers for daring to switch gears in the second half, thereby saving the film from becoming the usual fun-filled ride. It indeed is a daring act by Aziz, who explores and exposes who we truly are in private and in public, as an individual as well as the collective, in a daringly different, quirky and humorous way.
Nobody is a villain here but the greys are too many to ignore. An extra half-star dished out for Akshay Kumar and Taapsee Pannu's effortless acts and the lines that actually land!
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