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Homi Adajania’s Netflix Original Murder Mubarak is cut out of Bollywood’s ‘Murder Mystery Playbook’ – a guideline that illustrates unoriginal ways to make films in the genre. Quirky people, bizarre names, clandestine love affairs, suspicious oddballs, drug addicts, film stars, an over-enthusiastic culprit – the film has it all. The filmmaking qualifies for a messy dream Rian Johnson would wake up to on a sad Sunday. Murder Mubarak with its long list of eccentric (and unnecessary) characters is a film that wants to be delightfully droll but is all over the place.
The scarce few among the first-day viewers who watched the film for Adajania must be familiar with his quirky universes. You are sure to find Dimple Kapadia in them. They amuse you and yet you would never want to be in it. Murder Mubarak runs on familiar lines with a humor that is the maker’s signature. The editing (Akshara Prabhakar), in places, is so fast that sometimes you miss details (good that it’s a Netflix fare). Then there are times when the film turns excruciatingly slow with uneven flashbacks that you cannot even fast-forward due to the genre. Lastly, the film’s decidedly weird background score kills the mood in key sequences.
Instead of being delightfully dark, Adajania’s film proceeds on a predictable Knives Out-like template (although the setting is way more believable than 2023’s Neeyat) to end in an equally pedestrian manner.
The detective is an unlikely candidate you would spot in one of Adajania’s universes. Pankaj Tripathi as the chaste Hindi-spewing ACP Bhavani Singh seems to have run off the sets of Bunty Aur Babli 2 but with severe car parking woes and a recurrent gag with his subordinate (a la Om Puri in Pyaar To Hona Hi Tha). Singh enters the filthy rich world of Delhi elites in RDC (Royal Delhi Club) where a young Zumba instructor named Leo (Aashim Gulati) is murdered leaving the spotlight on its influential members.
The writing (Gazal Dhaliwal, Suprotim Sengupta) in Murder Mubarak works sporadically whenever the film doesn’t try hard. The frames brighten up whenever the salacious Kapadia surfaces. It is a massive hoot when a housekeeper makes tea and later spots her necklace in the victim’s bedroom. It is laugh-out-loud funny when a wealthy Roshni (Tisca Chopra) shows her version of empathy towards farmers. The dismissive club president (Deven Bhojani) is in his element when he asserts, “Murder isn’t allowed here,” Adajania, through such tiny moments, exposes upper-class hypocrisies to leave us in splits.
Murder Mubarak flounders whenever it focuses on a central romance between Bambi (Sara Ali Khan) and Kashi (Vijay Varma). Their class pride does not allow them to enter a matrimony but the love remains even after Bambi becomes a widow. Likewise, the narrative is packed with too many bit players contributing one line or an expression with negligible value-add to the story. The result is a convoluted film with loopholes galore where you do spot the killer from a distance but the person’s intent and sinister ways appear too orchestrated to make much sense. Then comes the side tracks (involving Sanjay Kapoor and Karisma Kapoor respectively) which try to make social commentaries but end up as mere diversions.
With an assortment of seasoned actors and happening newbies, the cast does its job well. It is Dimple Kapadia who steals the show as Cookie Katoch – a brief part that is right up her alley. Following her close is Tisca Chopra who plays wonderfully to the gallery. Vijay Varma and Sara Ali Khan pass muster as the boring romantic couple living amid a colorful bunch. Khan is shown to be a kleptomaniac – an angle that never evolves to become an interesting dimension. Karisma Kapoor, who returns to cinema after a break, does what is expected of her but Murder Mubarak is not the comeback her fans deserve. Sanjay Kapoor is slowly evolving into the most watchable actor in his family and he scores big as an impoverished royal family descendant with a secret. The weakest link is the generally dependable Brijendra Kala (as Guppie Ram) – a principal character that is ineffective solely due to the ambiguous way it’s sketched on paper.
Murder Mubarak ends up as a mediocre fare that never rises above its potential. Based on ‘Club You to Death’ by Anuja Chauhan, the material is pulpy when it should have been way more campy. Adajania’s film neither works as a whodunit nor a love story. Yes, the bits where it parodies the idiosyncrasies of Delhi elites make you chuckle. It’s just that the finger food gets over fast when the main course is as stale and tasteless as the investigation in Murder Mubarak.
Rating: ★★ 1/2
Murder Mubarak is now streaming on Netflix.
