Director: Aanand L. Rai
Writers: Himanshu Sharma, Kanika Dhillon
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Bhumi Pednekar, Sadia Khateeb, Deepika Khanna, Sahejmeen Kaur, Smrithi Srikanth

I remember watching Shallow hall (2001) as a teenager and, for the first time, realizing that some films use superficial characters as a smokescreen to hide their own superficiality. Here’s a gritty fat-centric comedy — about a hypnotized man who falls in love with a 300-pound woman because he sees her as a slender woman — scrolling like a fable about “inner beauty.” After having watched Raksha Bandhan, 21 years later, I think back with nostalgia to the famous star of Jack Black. I’ve seen my fair share of tone-deaf social drama over the years, but Raksha Bandhan takes the cake (without eggs). It’s the kind of adversarial film that beats for progressiveness even within the constraints of regressive systems, only to become progressively regressive by the minute. If you think it’s a tongue twister, I apologize. I’m a little shaken. Every time I tried to pull my hair out, the fall of my hair thwarted my efforts.

Once the film opens with a message thanking Sooraj Barjatya for “keeping Indian traditions and family values ​​alive in Hindi cinema”, Akshay Kumar appears as a loud resident of Chandni Chowk named Kedarnath. The intention is to show this man as a product of his patriarchal environment. He therefore runs a gol gappa stand which guarantees a male child to pregnant women who eat there. He made a vow to marry his childhood sweetheart, Sapna (Bhumi Pednekar), only after marrying his four sisters into decent homes. The purpose of his life is to earn enough money to pay their dowry. When an activist arrives to deliver anti-dowry speeches, Kedarnath berates her for depriving Indian families of the dignity and pride of marrying their daughters in the ‘right’ way. When some boys hiss at his sisters, he beats them up before declaring (with a microphone) that men who “tease” girls should be forced to marry them.

The problem with Raksha Bandhan is that it is impossible to distinguish the film from its narrow-minded setting. The small town energy of Aanand L. Rai’s average scene is so strong that it’s hard to tell whether the characters are condemned for their flaws or celebrated for their quirks. The activity and noise in a setting feel like red herrings that distract from its problematic themes. For instance, Raksha Bandhan without irony uses every woman in the story as a visual prop for the eventual enlightenment of the man. One of the sisters is obese only so Kedarnath can shame her and then regret her own behavior in the end. Another has dark skin so he can smother his face with fairness cream; another is tomboyish so he can call her Sunny Deol and make her wear a sari. He loves the light-skinned sister the most; the others are shown fighting like zoo animals over a samosa.

Kedarnath doesn’t know any better, of course; it is his conditioning. But Kumar plays these scenes for blatant comedy – the kind that Govinda made a career out of in the politically incorrect 90s. A potential newlywed encounter featuring twin brothers and a stuttering problem will go down as the craziest scene of the year. Moreover, the film itself begins to reflect this tone, drawing its entertainment from Kedarnath’s insults and Kumar’s frantic performance. He’s just using an offensive character as an excuse to be funny.

Also Read: Is Akshay Kumar the Only ‘Sure Thing’ in Bollywood?

The other problem is that because he’s a Bollywood superstar playing Kedarnath, even his chauvinism is designed to be noble. The movie never makes it clear that we’re supposed to dislike it; he presents his character as endearing, not toxic. At one point it is revealed that he is adopted and yet he sacrifices everything for the sisters. At another time, he sells one of his kidneys (!) to pay the dowry. The film is a narrative and textural misfire on so many levels that it even tries to gloss over his quest for brotherly love when in fact it’s his desperation to marry Sapna that’s driving him. It doesn’t help that Kedarnath shares a more romantic chemistry with the gol gappas he sells than with the woman he loves, who in turn spends most of her time screaming or crying. We know that a tragedy will transform our flawed hero. But change comes so late and so reluctantly that it feels like forced homework to make up for a day of pranks. You can almost hear the film shrug its shoulders: “Do I really to have to?”

The epilogue is so morally simplistic that the absurd fetishization of sanity in Arangi Re (2021), the director’s previous film, looks like an honorable crime by comparison. Raksha Bandhan is, at its core, a wicked wake-up call scrolling like a fable of family values. And there’s no redemption for that, just like there’s no redemption for a character who might have made fun of my hair loss as a “half moon” despite sporting himself a blatant fake mustache.