Maa Behen Review: A Comedy-Thriller Ruined By Terrible writing, and Nonsensical Plot
Rating: 1/5 Suyog Zore
Going into 'Maa Behen', I was hoping for a decent comedy-thriller—at least an entertaining time-pass movie to keep me invested, especially given the talented cast featuring Madhuri Dixit and Tripti Dimri. It certainly managed to entertain me, but for all the wrong reasons. Director Suresh Triveni and writer Pooja Tolani seem to have competed over who could deliver the worst element of the film, and honestly, it’s a tie between Pooja's nonsensical screenplay and Suresh's bewildering direction.
The plot revolves around a widow named Rekha (Madhuri Dixit) who lives in Krupa Nivas. After her husband passed away when she was just twenty-five, she became the prime target of moral-policing by her neighbors. She has an elder daughter, Jaya (Triptii Dimri), who is completely fed up with playing the role of a submissive housewife, and a younger daughter, Sushma (Dharna Durga), who is obsessed with the social media and desperate to go viral. One night, Rekha comes home to discover the dead body of her neighbor, Gupta Ji (Ravi Kishan), right inside her kitchen. Panicked, she calls her daughters to help her cover up the accidental death. However, as Rekha and her daughters try various tactics to hide the crime from the neighborhood, they only end up causing more chaos and fueling more gossip.
At its core, this film tackles feminism and highlights how differently our society treats women compared to men. For instance, Jaya's husband is a completely useless, unemployed man, yet she receives very little respect from her family despite handling all the housework—having cooked an absurd 1 lakh 27 thousand rotis. We also see Rekha framed entirely through a male perspective: painted as a seductress who has been lusting after and enticing men ever since her husband's death. The narrative is told almost through a male lens, reflecting how society views independent women living alone, or housewives who work day and night for their families but are rarely acknowledged for their hard work, let alone praised. Yet, despite this unique and bold concept, the execution is absolutely terrible.
The film’s impact is further diluted by its thinly written characters, especially the two sisters, who are stuck in a state of constant, repetitive bickering. Their responses to the literal dead body lying right inside their house lack real stakes or urgency, and the various strategies they employ to conceal the dead body come across as extremely cartoonish and divorced from reality. The director attempts to extract constant humour from this chaotic situation, with the mother and daughters arguing amongst themselves one minute and then putting on a straight face frantically the next, to make sure the neighbours suspect nothing. The character depth is so shallow that these family fights are more annoying than funny and the high-stakes cover-up feels more like a poorly-timed slapstick sketch than a gripping dark comedy.
The movie also tries to reveal a taboo subject: how our society judges and looks down on women with physical and emotional needs. That’s a daring subject to take on, but the execution isn’t. The writer and director’s efforts to force this theme into the storyline come across as extremely awkward and overly simplistic. Instead of blending it in naturally with the story, it sticks out for all the wrong reasons, feeling too forced to actually resonate with the audience.
It’s a misfire all the more frustrating for the wasted opportunity of its subversive flip. The idea of men lusting after women is a trope so deeply ingrained and normalised by cinema that audiences barely bat an eye, they simply accept it as a narrative driving force. But the moment the tables are turned, and we get to see a woman who is openly sexually attracted to men and unapologetic about it, society’s first response is to humiliate her and slap her with derogatory labels. The film clearly aims to attack this double standard by portraying female desire as active, but its clumsy storytelling prevents it from making a strong social statement. The heavy-handed execution undermines what could have been a truly breakthrough and uplifting narrative shift by making the character's expression of sexuality feel caricatured rather than confronting the viewer's prejudices.
In the last twenty minutes or so the film desperately tries to redeem itself of all of its structural and narrative problems, trying a last minute save but by then the damage is already done and far too late to save the movie. There are so many bloated and unnecessarily elongated scenes that could easily have been chopped in the editing room. The 2-hour-7-minute runtime could have felt a lot crisper and tighter if this filler was gotten rid of, but instead the movie just drags on pointlessly. To top it off, the supporting characters have very little to aid the story. Particularly Jaya's inept husband and Gupta's wife, are so poorly written and shallow that they contribute virtually nothing to the main story. Every single time they came on screen, they brought the momentum to a screeching halt. I found myself always wanting to hit the fast-forward button just to get through their scenes.
In order to merge the comedy and thriller elements, Madhuri Dixit, Tripti Dimri, and even Dharna Durga are intentionally pushed to overact in a number of sequences. However, they exaggerate their performances so much that we never actually feel their characters' emotions, and in several scenes, they end up making us cringe rather than laugh. Instead of creating a balanced dark comedy, the director pushes them into the realm of exhausting theatricality. This constant high-pitched delivery completely strips away any genuine tension that a thriller requires to keep the audience hooked. When every panicked moment or argument is dialed up to such an extent, the stakes start to feel entirely artificial.
Overall, 'Maa Behen' is an absolute trainwreck of a comedy-thriller, bogged down by terrible writing, a nonsensical plot with more plot holes than potholes on Indian roads, and a rollercoaster of bizarre moments that defy logic. To top it all off, Madhuri Dixit, Tripti Dimri, and Dharna Durga deliver completely over-the-top performances. Ultimately, Maa Bahen easily earns a spot at the very top of the "so bad it's good" movie list.
Cast: Madhuri Dixit, Tripti Dimri, Dharna Durga, Ravi Kishan
Writer: Pooja Tolani
Director: Suresh Triveni
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