3 Stars (out of 4)
Watch Meethe Mein Kya Hai on Netflix
Meethe Mein Kya Hai (“What’s for Dessert?“) is a feel-good movie about a feel-bad topic: grief. Writer-director Radhika Bansal makes a promising debut with this charming film about family.
Thirty-five-year-old Jai (Ritwik Bhowmik) is two years removed from his wife Tara’s (Kanikka Kapur) death in a car accident. He’s not doing well. His solution is to sell his home in Delhi and move to the country of Georgia, where he can get a fresh start alone.
Jai plans to skip the family Diwali gathering at his grandmother’s home in Lucknow, but his sister Sana (Dalai) begs him to come. She got married in secret, and she needs Jai to protect her when she tells their mom Amrita (Ayesha Raza Mishra) the news. For his sister’s sake, Jai makes the trip.
Nani’s (Rohini Hattangadi) house in Lucknow is gorgeous and festive, full of life in a way it hasn’t been in years. Besides Jai’s mom Amrita and dad Ajay (Gaurav K. Sharma), the other people staying there are his maternal uncle Rishab (Abhay Kaul), Aunt Preeti (Tarana Raja), and their college-aged son Sid (Ayuushman Ghai). Nani’s 13-year-old neighbor Meera (Shivika Rishi) is also staying there while her mom is out of town.
Between the writing and the acting in Meethe Mein Kya Hai, it feels like the audience is spying on a real family with dynamics that have developed over decades. Nani catches Amrita and Rishab whispering about her, and their reactions seem the same as if they’d been busted as teenagers. The relationships between everyone feel “lived in.”
This quality takes on particular import when the family interacts with Jai. Should they express their concern over how he’s doing without Tara? Should they act as if everything is normal? They all loved Tara, so how do they manage their own sense of loss without upsetting Jai?
When Sana arrives with her new, secret husband Karam (Vikram Bakshi), it sends Amrita into the tizzy Sana predicted. Amrita is even more upset when she realizes that Jai already knew about the marriage, raging as she wonders why no one tells her anything. It’s very funny.
Whatever conflicts the family has are handled with sensitivity and humor. Bansal’s tone is light, aiming to make her characters familiar and relatable rather than dramatic in a cinematic sense. It’s also laugh-out-loud funny on several occasions.
The only slight misstep is the way in which scenes between Jai and young neighbor Meera are shot. The two become allies, with Meera needing a friend and Jai needing a break from his family. On a couple of occasions, the camera cuts between closeups of their faces in a way that seems more suited for a romantic scene, even though there’s nothing inappropriate happening. It’s a distracting choice.
That said, Meera does confess late in the movie to having a crush on Jai (which he does not reciprocate, obviously). He handles the confession compassionately, helping her to realize on her own that this is not a relationship that can work. It’s a kinder way of letting her down than outright rejection. He understands that she is just a kid after all.
The sequence is a good example of all the things the Meethe Mein Kya Hai does best: focusing on the goodness of the characters and their love for each other.
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