Tag Archives: Anuja Chauhan

Movie Review: Murder Mubarak (2024)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

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The mystery Murder Mubarak is packed with characters but feels insubstantial. Sara Ali Khan and Vijay Varma show why they are in-demand actors, but Pankaj Tripathi’s turn as an offbeat detective feels too familiar.

The film — based on Anuja Chauhan’s novel Club You to Death — invites comparison to Knives Out, as both feature a murder where most of the suspects are obscenely wealthy. However, a critical difference renders the class undertones in Murder Mubarak less satisfying. The murder victim in Knives Out is the patriarch of a rich family, whereas the dead man in Murder Mubarak is an employee at a posh country club.

Director Homi Adajania’s movie takes place at the Royal Delhi Club, a British colonial relic. The morning after a raucous party, the club’s hunky fitness coach Leo (Aashim Gulati) is found dead in the gym. Police inspector Bhavani Singh (Pankaj Tripathi) and his assistant Padam Kumar (Priyank Tiwari) determine that Leo’s death was homicide and set about questioning the eccentric members.

None of them are eccentric in a fun way. There’s B-grade actress Shehnaaz (Karisma Kapoor), royal descendant Rannvijay (Sanjay Kapoor), and Cookie (Dimple Kapadia), whose tongue is bright red from constantly drinking beet juice. Club president Bhatti (Deven Bhojani) has a perpetually runny nose that he wipes with his hand before touching people.

Adajania insists on showing example after example of the president’s revolting habit. It highlights an unexpected gross streak in the movie. Deaths that occur later in the film are needlessly gory, and Cookie’s bright red tongue is unappealing, too.

Inspector Singh discovers that Leo the trainer was blackmailing several members of the club, using the money he extracted from them to fund the orphanage where he grew up. While this gives those being blackmailed a motive to kill Leo, his death actually makes their lives easier. It’s not like there’s a killer targeting rich folks. The only consequence is that one of the other trainers at the gym will have to take over the Zumba class.

The surfeit of tedious oddball characters accentuate the narrative’s slow pace. The only characters who are remotely interesting are two of the club’s younger members: twenty-something widow Bambi (Sara Ali Khan) and Aakash (Vijay Varma), who’d rather be anywhere else. He’s had a crush on Bambi forever but left town after her wedding. She still knows how to push his buttons and does so to keep him around.

Khan’s performance is natural and engaging. Varma likewise demonstrates why he’s cast in seemingly every Netflix Original movie these days. Sanjay Kapoor has one very good scene, but the rest of the performances are nothing to write home about.

Tripathi has been the go-to guy for quirky roles for several years now, and the well is starting to run dry. Inspector Singh is fine but unremarkable. It’s time for casting agents to find a new actor to pigeonhole into these types of parts and let Tripathi move on to meatier roles.

There’s a chance that the book Club You to Death is better than the movie, but Murder Mubarak is so lifeless that I’m not tempted to find out.

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Movie Review: The Zoya Factor (2019)

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3 Stars (out of 4)

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Buy the book at Amazon

A young woman’s good fortune causes headaches for both her and the captain of India’s cricket team as they try to win the World Cup in The Zoya Factor, based on Anuja Chauhan’s 2008 novel of the same name.

The novel and movie are both set in a timeline based on the 2011 Cricket World Cup tournament played in India, but the members of the Indian cricket team are all fictional.

Sonam Kapoor Ahuja plays Zoya, a copywriter struggling to fit in at her snooty advertising firm who’s rejected by potential romantic suitors because of her middle-class background. At least her dad Vijayendra (Sanjay Kapoor, Kapoor Ahuja’s real-life uncle) and older brother Zoravar (Sikander Kher) love her. They believe she brings them luck in their local cricket pickup games because she was born the day India won its last World Cup in 1983.

Zoya is sent on a make-or-break work assignment to photograph members of the Indian Cricket Team. She gets off to a mixed start with the team’s handsome captain, Nikhil (Dulquer Salmaan), who is charmed by her exuberance and frustrated by her determination. But when he sees Zoya’s co-workers ignore her at breakfast the next morning, he invites her to eat with the team, where she tells them that she’s her family’s lucky charm on the cricket pitch. The team wins their match that afternoon, and Zoya becomes their lucky charm, too.

Screenwriters Pradhuman Singh and Neha Rakesh Sharma skillfully adapt Chauhan’s novel, so that all of drama in the film arises from the characters’ conflicting motivations. Zoya is of course delighted when handsome, rich Nikhil takes a romantic interest in her, but she’s just as thrilled to finally fit in with a group. The team’s most superstitious players — Shivy (Abhilash Chaudhary) and Harry (Gandharv Dewan) — value Zoya for her good luck, but they also genuinely like her because she takes an interest in them. She approaches them differently than Nikhil, who believes that hard work is the only factor in team’s success. When he insists that Zoya stay away from the team, lest they put too much faith in her, he doesn’t realize that her presence has a reassuring affect on jittery players like Shivy and Harry, making them more relaxed on the pitch and helping them perform better.

Even the story’s villain, Robin (Angad Bedi), has understandable motives. It would be a lot easier for Robin to reclaim the captaincy he lost to Nikhil if the public and the Indian Cricket Board give Zoya the credit for the team’s victories — especially when Nikhil is trying to keep her away. It just so happens that Robin’s uncle is the head of the Cricket Board, which makes Zoya an offer that forces her to choose what’s really important to her.

Sikander Kher is stealthily terrific in the movie, and his character plays an important part in steering Zoya’s choices. As her big brother, he’s sincerely concerned for her well-being, but he also reinforces all of Zoya’s insecurities by asking her why someone as popular as Nikhil would be with a nobody like her. Adding insult to injury is that she hates his nickname for her, delightfully translated in the English subtitles as “Spongebob.”

The whole cast is likeable, and Salmaan and Kapoor Ahuja are quite cute together. There’s a distracting amount of product placement in The Zoya Factor, but it’s otherwise a sweet, fun romantic comedy.

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