Mere Dad Ki Maruti

Rating : 6/10
Release Date : 15th March, 2013
Time : 102 minutes
Director : Ashima Chibber; Writer : Neeraj Udhwani; Music : Sachin Gupta
Starring : Saqib Saleem, Prabal Panjabi, Rhea Chakraborty, Ram Kapoor, Ravi Kishan



Light hearted, breezy, funny, shallow (almost like the people its portraying), full of the classic stereotypes about Punjabi’s, this is a film where the overall story is a one liner – about a young kid who loses his car and fears the consequences from his dominating father – but the fun lies in the journey….





That the car in question has been purchased as a gift for son-in-law to be, to be given after the imminent wedding ceremony, only makes it worse. Believability is stretched more than once, with sometimes our hero choosing an option, where most would rather just go to the Dad and confess all. A taxi wala, a Maruti showroom, a cop with the IQ of a penguin and a stolen car trader cum Bhai (Ravi Kishen gets it just right as the sher spouting, gun toting Don type) are all roped in, involved at various points.



The cause of all the trauma is Rhea, she of the sexy legs, hot pants, transparent lehngas and protruding pout. The part where our hero chooses to risk his father’s wrath to ensure his first date with her goes well, is totally believable, BTW, she didn’t look the type who would be fine in an auto…





The at times hapless, at times willing co-consiprator, the faithful friend, Prabal, is excellent – in fact delivering a better performance than the lead, who I felt overacted in a few places. Special mention has to be made of the mom (unable to find her real name) – completely oblivious of the crowds reaction as she bobbed her head to her daughters (also very good, but {begin rant} why Hindi films don’t like to publish the entire credits on the net is beyond me {end rant}) over the top, wildly inappropriate wedding dance…



The movie is littered with dialogue that makes you laugh – with adequate references to social media (it’s a youth film after all) and enough Punju jokes & innovative expletives (pathe da ullu) to evoke the necessary guffaws – calling someone burger instead of bugger, or psychic instead of psycho or even proposing using really, really terrible English..



While the end is nice, complete with an unexpected twist (albeit one which stretches credulity), it does seem to arrive after much huffing and puffing. The film doesn’t have the vacuousness or the complete lack of plot that most of our so-called mass entertainers seem to pride themselves in. It does go a little further than that and entertains sufficiently for us to overlook its flaws