‘Hum Do Hamare Do’ Review: Fake Family Trope Comes With Some Very Real Problems
More often than not, watching a movie trailer will give you a basic idea ki aapko movie kaisi lagegi. When I saw the trailer for Hum Do Hamare Do, my first thought was, “Yaar, why are we still making movies on this fake parents trope?” It’s legit fraud! And the next thought was about what I thought would happen in this film. Call me clairvoyant, but my bhavishyavaani was 100% true. The film, directed by Abhishek Jain, and featuring Rajkummar Rao, Kriti Sanon, Paresh Rawal, Ratna Pathak Shah, Manu Rishi Chadha, Prachee Shah Pandya, and Aparshakti Khurana, was every bit as I predicted. Funny in places because of the actors, but at what cost? At the cost of logic, characters’ and audience intelligence and passing off fraud and gaslighting as fair in love.
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What’s Hum Do Hamare Do about?
The film begins with Chhotu, an orphan working at a dhaba, who after a chance encounter, decides to do something different with his life, starting with changing his name. Cut to… years later, we meet Dhruv Shikhar (Rajkummar Rao), a tech wiz who is at the launch of his VR app. It’s here that he bumps into Anya Mehra (Kriti Sanon), a blogger and Instagram influencer and perhaps the most naïve simpleton I’ve ever seen. As if influencers aren’t judged enough already, show them in this light so they can be judged more!
Anyhoo, love happens, and Anya, who is an orphan herself and raised by her chacha-chachi, tells Dhruv that she’ll only marry a guy who has a “sweet si family our ek doggie.” Normally, I’d like to think that people empathise with those who’ve gone through or are in similar situations as them. So any sensible person would like to believe that Anya wouldn’t actually reject Dhruv after finding out he was an orphan too. Kehne ko toh I also want a husband like Ranveer Singh, but I won’t reject a guy’s proposal if his wardrobe is not as eccentric or he can’t rap.
But because Bollywood loves to portray heroines as unreasonable, whimsical princesses who will never adjust their ‘demands’, Dhruv decides for both of them that Anya will break up with him if she finds out he has no family. And because he has already lied to her that he has parents. Thus begins the circus of finding fake parents so he can lie to the love of his life for the rest of her life about his family situation.
He finds the dhaba owner, Premi Chacha (Paresh Rawal), from his childhood to play his father. As for his mother, he convinces Premi’s college-time love, Dipti (Ratna Pathak Shah), to play his mother. The two have their own troubled history, but somehow, pull it together for Dhruv and Anya. Until something unravels the whole plot… at the actual wedding sangeet ceremony.
Also Read: 5 Thoughts We Had About ‘Hum Do Hamare Do’ Trailer: Funny, But Aren’t We Done With This ‘Fake Parents’ Trope?
Let’s get the good stuff appreciated first, and by that I mean Ratna Pathak Shah
If you’ve read my Hum Do Humare Do trailer review, I was the most eager to see what Shah brings to this film, because even from the promos, you know she’s acing it. Unlike the other characters, there is depth to her character’s back story, and her motivation to be a part of this charade, albeit hesitantly, is believable. She plays the part with conviction as if she were a professional fake parent. And she’s able to do that only because her emotions for Dhruv come from a very real place of longing and care of a mother.
The film is funny in places, the way these types of films were funny when this trope was used years ago and we expected very little from our movies. Also because the actors are all so good at comedy, practically stalwarts. Here too, Ratna Pathak Shah steals the show with her straight-faced dialogue delivery that makes you laugh.
But that’s about it.
The problematic bits, the loopholes in the logic, and the subtle sexism that’s rampant in the film
Get ready because this is going to be a rant.
In 14 Phere, a film starring Vikrant Massey and Kriti Kharbanda released a few months ago and also used the ‘fake parents’ trope, at least the couple had the foresight to ask their office friends to play their fake relatives. How could Dhruv, his BFF Shanty (Aparshakti Khurana), or his fake parents not anticipate that if Anya’s family agrees to the wedding, they’d also need fake relatives for the wedding? How shortsighted would you have to be?
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Sometimes the mere logistics of this boggles my mind. There’s a character called Shaadiram, a dude who works in this business of supplying fake relatives for weddings. He’s projected as this one-stop solution to all shaadi-related issues. But more than Shaadiram, he seems like a shady-ram. If he is a professional, why are all the people he has lined up for this gig so bad at playing fake relatives? You’d think with every service provider, from nanny to domestic worker, becoming so professional and employing highly trained and educated people in their respective fields, this particular business would have gotten some professional actors too? Alas. The last time I saw fake relatives look convincing, the film was Shuddh Desi Romance, and they were played by Parineeti Chopra and the late Sushant Singh Rajput.
The film further suffers from repeating the mistakes of its genre predecessors in addition to its own blaring loopholes. The same old bumbling errors by fake family members, as if they want to get caught by the bride’s family. The groom’s fake father keeps forgetting the bride’s name! Despite so many obvious signs that something is off with Dhruv’s family, Anya and her family don’t suspect a thing until the wedding days. That too when it is spelled out for them explicitly, on a mic. Anya is an influencer, how has she not dug up any info on Dhruv or his family? Does Dhruv not have any friends? Does Anya not have friends? Does nobody here have eyes or common sense? Or basic curiosity?
Also Read: Dune Review: Denis Villeneuve Mounts An Epic Spectacle Powered By Timothée Chalamet And Hans Zimmer’s Score
Weddings are events where relatives are beady-eyed and looking for some jhol even where there is none. Marriages are delicate relationships, in which both families do background checks and oodles of stalking, and even then, the slightest of misgivings can break up the wedding. With all of this, how am I supposed to buy that this rishta even reached the sangeet stage? HOW?
Hum Do Hamare Do refuses to listen to its own conscience and pushes love as the only thing that matters for all the wrong reasons. So you have Shah’s character Dipti warning Dhruv that he should not base his relationship on a lie, and his friend Shanty telling him that Anya will understand his truth if he tells her. You have Anya’s younger cousin sister Kanika question her father about what a “family” really means. But no one, absolutely no one, not a single soul, tells Dhruv that what he plans to do is actually fraud. And expensive. And not sensible at all. Or tell Anya that she is right in dumping Dhruv’s ass because what if he lies to her post-marriage?
Also Read: ’14 Phere’ Review: Vikrant Massey, Kriti Kharbanda Film Has A Good Heart, And Yet, Reality Crashes This Wedding
What’s even worse is that Anya and her family find out the truth by fluke. This means had the incident not happened, Dhruv would’ve happily married Anya without ever telling her the truth. And here’s where the gaslighting peaks. Dhruv barely even apologises to Anya for lying to her! On the contrary, there’s a whole lot of crap about how he is the victim, how he “chose” his family since this society didn’t let him have one, his frustrations, and how much he and his fake parents have done to ensure Anya is happy! Erm, hello sir, you just defrauded this girl you claim to love! How can you even dare to be defensive about this? Who is allowing this reasoning to see the light of day?
But wait, that was worse. The worst is yet to come. To convince us and Anya that it would be a mistake to let Dhruv and his pyaar go for such a ‘small’ reason, we’re shown that the arranged marriage guy she is getting hitched to is a total douchebag. Why the overkill? Does it mean if he were a nice guy, Anya would’ve not had her epiphany? Why can’t he be a decent guy, and Anya chooses Dhruv because she loves him and not because the other guy has different plans for his family? Why shame the dude and make him a caricature? Baghban chal raha hai kya?
The sheer sexism in the superficial understanding of Anya, her blogger career, and her desire for a family makes me pissed. Rajkummar Rao and Ratna Pathak Shah, brilliant actors who deserve more, getting reduced to such roles makes me pissed. Paresh Rawal and Aparshakti Khurana doing the same kind of roles makes me pissed. The typical shot of the hero looking at the heroine while she prays in the temple makes me pissed. And the utter insult to everyone’s intelligence makes me pissed.
Verdict
Look, can I be honest? We all have those parts of us that will laugh at certain points in the film, and get emotional over others because we’ve been conditioned to enjoy this kind of cinema. And okay, there’s nothing wrong with that, because usska bhi ek zamana that. You can watch Hum Do Hamare Do for a fun time with the fam, alright. It’s got everything, including a wholesome family song and that fun post-credit peppy number.
But as audiences, we must evolve, because our world is evolving and our movies are evolving too. The problem isn’t that the fake family trope was used. The problem is that the trope was used in a time and age where it is so easy to catch people in their lies, just as easy as it is to fake something. You may want to laugh at the slapstick humour portrayed, or maybe at the foolishness of the characters themselves, but if watching the film does not also make you realise that it’s problematic to show someone defrauding a person, especially a woman, to such an extent, and then forgiveness coming so easily to them, then you’re not evolving. And that too is problematic.
Hum Do Hamare Do is currently streaming on Disney+Hotstar.
