'Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui' will make you laugh and cry and fall in love with love

Ayushmann Khurrana as Mannu Munjal in 'Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui'. (Image: Screen grab)

Kudos to the director Abhishek Kapoor who makes a big macho man question his ‘macho-ness’  in this wonderful rom-com. Vaani Kapoor deserves praise for choosing such an unusual role and ace it.

So the big Gabru from Chandigarh, Mannu Munjal (Ayushmann Khurrana), spends all his time exercising his muscles at the Jatt Gym which he owns along with the twins who give you instant flashbacks of Matrix Reloaded (the twin henchman of the Merovingian). The twins played by Gaurav Kapoor and Gautam Kapoor are a brilliant find and will fit perfectly in case someone makes a Bollywood version of the Matrix trilogy. But I digress. The twins want Mannu to work hard and win the all-important Gabru of the year challenge. Now Mannu has always come up second best to Sandy pa-ji and needs to win so more people will join his gym. Sandy is also a rival for Guruji’s affection. Sandy and Mannu compete at pulling jeeps with ropes and other such macho events. There is in fact so much testosterone in Chandigarh we think the air reeks not of sarson ka saag (as Yash Raj films would have us believe), but of whey protein.

The Punjabi family that eats bhaturas and white butter is so much fun you want to be a part of the madhouse. Grandpa (Anjaan Srivastava) is genial and dad is working hard at a bathroom fittings store, hoping he will hand it over to his ‘nalayak’ son who spends all his time at the gym (he is also secretly in love with a Muslim woman but is too chicken to admit it to the world). The two sisters Preet and Meet (Tanya Abrol whom we loved in Chak De! India plays the older sister, and the younger sister is debutante Sawan Rupowali) make Mannu’s life miserable with their incessant questions: Why haven’t you called the girl from the matrimonial site? Why don’t you paste pictures of some buxom heroines instead of the macho men? Are you not ‘normal’?

But Mannu’s ‘normal’ life - focused so far on winning that ‘Gabru of the Year’ title - is turned upside down when the drop dead gorgeous Joomba instructor Maanvi Brar walks into his gym. Her Zumba moves bring in not just bunches of women and raise the much needed memberships but also raise the temperatures of men who show up in droves to exercise, hoping to catch the eye of the beautiful Maanvi. Mannu invites her to a Holi party and things escalate quickly in the attraction business.

All of a sudden, you wish Steven Spielberg had seen this film so he could have understood what instant attraction looks like (and he would have realised that his Maria and Tony from West Side Story look like damp squibs instead!). The physical attraction between the macho Mannu and the gorgeous Maanvi becomes very obvious to all (yes, the twins see the locker room encounter of the two!). The relentless physical love is done very nicely, and so is the fun connected to it. Maanvi looks like an angel when she brings Mannu home (he’s got a nosebleed and is a big baby about his injury!) and his family are also stunned by this English-speaking, fashionably dressed bhabi-to-be.

When Mannu asks Maanvi to marry him, she confesses to a past that makes the macho man’s normal world shatter. Maanvi’s honesty ends in tears and we as audience react to that confession too. But the director makes it easy for us to examine our reaction. He makes the whole family react. Has Mannu really lost his marbles? Will Maanvi’s broken heart be fixed again ever? Are we Maanvi’s supportive dad or her mom? Are we Mannu’s nosey sisters who will discover unpalatable truths of life? Are we name callers or are we truly inclusive? The question is serious, but not once are you made to feel ashamed, because the script is handled rather deftly. It’s like Mannu confesses (and he’s confessing for all of us): I am sorry. I studied in a government school. It takes me time to understand these new concepts…

But the ‘new’ concept is not really new. We behave exactly as Mannu’s sisters do when we are confronted with anything different. Mannu knows his sisters will behave as if they are possessed all the time (Meri behno par to hamesha mata aayi hoti hai!), and he asks the twins: why did you not say anything?

But Maanvi is not willing to forgive any more. She challenges Mannu: I dare you to do your worst. Abhishek Kapoor, the director, could have easily pushed the concept downhill. But the film pushes you, the audience, to take sides. Yes, it’s a rom-com, and things will end with a yes from the girl. But the journey is so delightful, you forget that you have learnt something you never really understood before. Something most people don’t understand. In a breezy, easy to grasp telling which will make you laugh into your popcorn. The music is fun too and there’s not a moment of madness of this story that is uselessly bulked up. Yes, the film is Punjabified-Hindi, but if you’re a Bollywood watcher, then you will realise how much Yash Raj rom-coms have contributed to your understanding of the language. The pronoun obsessed world might not think the film does anything big for them. But it’s a giant baby step to a new understanding of what is normal. And Macho Man meets Gorgeous Girl with a past works like an unexpected miracle.