‘Pati Patni Aur Woh’ is a fun watch

“Pati Patni Aur Woh”; Cast: Kartik Aaryan, Bhumi Pednekar, Ananya Panday, Aparshakti Khurana; Direction: Mudassar Aziz; Rating * * * (three stars) The interesting thing about the reimagined “Pati Patni Aur Woh” is its setting. Version 2019 is based in smalltown Kanpur, and it narrates the story of a middle-class couple in that city. In BR Chopra’s 1978 original, the protagonists belonged to the middle-class too, but they lived in Bombay.
It seems pertinent how, 41 years on, this remake picks the plot’s extramarital core from the megapolis and puts it right in the centre of smalltown India, which is learning to openly discuss sex, fidelity, virginity and marriage (the idea is wittily underlined in the opening scenes, where the hero asks his prospective bride her hobbies and she replies: “Humein sex karna pasand hai”).
At a time when remakes, reboots and recreations have become the norm, writer-director Mudassar Aziz’s reorganising of a BR Chopra comedy classic to woo new-age viewers would seem like an ambitious idea. His credibility lies in the fact that his version holds its own.
For those who may not be familiar with Chopra’s 1978 film, it is a comedy of errors centred on the extramarital fling of a middle-aged man (played impeccably by Sanjeev Kumar). Aziz retains that basic idea in his 2019 redux, but changes everything else in the new film, including key plot points, character details, plot progression and a lot of what happens towards the end.
Like its original, and despite acquiring a new-age irreverent edge, “Pati Patni Aur Woh” 2019 manages to stay funny without losing out on decency, despite moving dangerously close to the domain of political incorrectness.