The Indiscretions of the Bourgeoisie

Adulterous men, archaic tropes and juvenile humor in a film that still manages to garner a few laughs.

We rarely examine what brings a smile to our faces. There are patently absurd realities in our life, which when pointed out to us (after we have gained sufficient distance from them of course), can evoke only laughter. As a constant reminder of our inner child we continue to laugh at juvenile sexual innuendo and as evidence of schadenfreude there is the slip on the banana peel. But somewhere within the anatomy of a carefully constructed joke there exists, usually, a bone of surprise. It is this element of the unexpected that sparks our laughter. It is also the reason most jokes come with a quota of retells: a number beyond which they lose their sting and need to be retired until a new audience is found.

Anees Bazmee’s Thank You is filled with gags, some eminently past their quota of retells and others still on their way to the retirement home. Thank You’s universe borrows liberally from Bazmee’s earlier runaway ribald hit No Entry, so much so the 2005 release even makes its presence felt on screen. It is a universe where the leading men rarely have trouble landing not just one, but a bevy of women and are never bothered by why it is so easy for them. Vikram, Yogi and Raj are three friends, philanderers and partners in a rather ironically named yacht dealership. While Yogi’s wife Maya has already relegated her husband to the doghouse on account of his extramarital affairs, Raj’s wife Sanjana and Vikram’s wife Shivani remain largely unaware of their husbands’ misdemeanors. When a germ of doubt enters Sanjana’s head it opens the door for private detective extraordinaire, Kishan, to waltz in flute in hand to either solve or exacerbate the problem.

The casting choices and the narrative are clearly indicative of Bazmee’s intention to make the Raj-Sanjana marriage the focal point of the film. However, it is the inscrutably passive aggressive relationship between Vikram and Shivani that plays out in a far more interesting manner on screen. If Baazmee’s goal had been a true- blue screwball comedy, which is what Thank You ends up being for a majority of its time, he would have been better served milking this relationship for material.

Akshay Kumar plays Kishan, the detective with questionable intentions, more like a pied piper making the three couples into rats that dance to his tunes, rather than the eponymous God. He is obviously the star, the headliner and the comedy heavyweight of this ensemble cast but unfortunately that only means that he gets to dish out the largest serving of jokes nearing retirement. It is Suniel Shetty, with his turn as the hen pecked, almost imbecilic Yogi, who surprises us with a few well timed absurdities. While the narrative is filled with twists and turns, it was Shetty’s antics that brought forth the loudest laughs, probably because it was the unexpected surprise package. The rest is just old hat.


P.S: An edited version appears here.