REVIEW: Vicky Donor

GENUINELY FUNNY

Early in Shoojit Sircar's Vicky Donor, the protagonist's (Ayushmann Khurrana) hardcore Punjabi mother Dolly (Dolly Ahluwalia) and grandmother (Kamlesh Gill) are seen guzzling whisky together sprawled in their modest Lajpat Nagar drawing room. Turns out, it's a nightly ritual for the two women who bicker with each other through the day but lay down their arms at sunset, and on this particular occasion, the old woman tells her daughter-in-law, "Pata nahin aaj mainu chhadh kyon nahin rahi." In another loony scene, Dolly shows Dr Chaddha (Annu Kapoor) a picture of her long deceased Sikh husband and asks him most unselfconsciously, "Lagte hain na Obama ki tarah?" It's her conviction that her dead husband was reborn as the American President, only a couple of shades darker.

These delightful moments manifest the refreshing attitude of a film set in the resolutely middle-class heart of Delhi—think Do Dooni Chaar and Band Baaja Baraat. Where the grandmother longs for a 32-inch LCD TV and 32gb iPhone, and Vicky rightly describes her as the only other modern thing in Delhi besides the Metro for her progressive, no-nonsense views.

Splendidly written by Juhi Chaturvedi, Vicky Donor is a quality comedy that entertains while punching gentle holes at India's hypocrisy and squeamishness about sex. In the second most populous nation on earth, sex is still a taboo and as a result Dr Chaddha struggles to find worthy sperm donors. Infertile couples flood his clinic (too much 'strass' in modern life, he informs Vicky on a car drive, his sperm-shaped car hanging bobbing in approval) with just the kind of unrealistic demands you'd expect parents to harbour about their still-to-be-conceived offspring—a cross between Dhoni's batting talent and Aishwarya Rai's looks.

Dr Chaddha, whose business is floundering due to paucity of donors with the right gene pool, spots unemployed but smooth-talking Vicky by accident and stalks him relentlessly, going to great lengths including showing him a map of Alexander's route to India to prove that he is in fact a true-blooded Aryan. "Main shakal dekh ke sperm pehchaan jaata hoon," he declares. You can tell that Annu Kapoor has landed the role of his lifetime and he's determined to ham it up shamelessly—nobody expects Dr Chaddha to be any other way.

Poor Vicky meanwhile gets slapped around when he tells his girlfriends about this new occupation and by the time he falls for Bengali banker Ashima (Yami Gautam, the weakest link), the lad has wisened up. So when she asks him what he does, he mumbles about trading and import-export before settling for the not entirely untrue, 'handicrafts'. Nobody knows what he does and naturally when the truth emerges, all hell breaks loose. But before that is a hilarious wedding between a Bengali and a Punjabi and expectedly, both sets of elders come with their own sets of prejudices resulting in great comic repartee.

The pace of the film flags every now and then and particularly towards the end where the screenplay forces itself in the direction of a neat resolution. But the setting and the dialogues are spot-in—you don't even have to be a Delhi-ite to laugh wholeheartedly at these quirky but lovable characters, each one of them, including the Bengali father who tells his daughter how men from their own community are very good in bed while his horrified sister looks on.

Ayushmann Khurrana makes an assured debut at Vicky, turning on the charm and letting his cute dimples do the talking. Besides, he's lucky to play a hero who's allowed to give his fiancee a pedicure in his mother's parlour. What woman wouldn't fall for this guy?