Sukhee Movie Review: Shilpa Shetty leads a familiar feministic fable

When a film is named after the protagonist, you automatically expect it to revolve around her journey. As promised in the trailer, Sukhee shows us how Sukhpreet (Shilpa Shetty), a disrespected and neglected housewife, tries to embark on a self-exploration trip. Unfortunately, even as it reminds us of many feministic fables – including the recently released Prime Video original Sweet Kaaram Coffee – Sukhee takes a very familiar and unrefreshing route to give us a message about homemakers and women in general. 

Director: Sonal Joshi

Cast: Shilpa Shetty, Chaitanya Choudhry, Kusha Kapila, Vinod Nagpal, Dilnaz Irani, Pavleen Gujral 

What is Sukhee all about? Well, Shilpa’s Sukhee rides a bullet, she rides a horse, but sadly she is taken for a ride by her husband Guru (Chaitanya Choudhry), who not only forgets to spend time with his family but also takes her for granted. So, Sukhpreet takes the opportunity to break away from mundanity and re-live her pre-marital life for a short while, as she decides to attend her school reunion in Delhi. 

Right at the beginning, we see a young Sukhee and her friends being “Besharam, Bedhadak and Beparwah” (shameless, fearless, careless). We then see a grown-up Sukhee being the exact opposite as she leads a completely different life as a housewife. While we expect the film to give us a hard-hitting take on how homemakers are neglected a la Thappad or English Vinglish, Sukhee treads lightly in the area, and resorts to comedy rather than facing reality. While the comedy in the first half, courtesy a brilliant Vinod Nagpal, cracks us up, it fails to establish the disregard Sukhee experiences, which forces her to break free from the mundanity.

Eventually, when Guru says, “Poora din ghar me tu karti kya hai?” (What do you do at home all day?), Sukhee packs her bags and leaves for the reunion, unannounced. Here, as Sukhee reunites with her three best friends (played by Kusha Kapila, Dilnaz Irani and Pavleen Gujral), we expect the kind of fun the women of Veere Di Wedding, or that of Sweet Kaaram Coffee, have. Instead, we just get to see Shilpa Shetty shake her leg to the now viral song ‘Nasha’ and the group of four engage in a food tour across Delhi, which leads them to a scene involving diarrhoea and an intervention. While it was quite refreshing to watch women being involved in slapstick comedy, these scenes fail to show the kind of fun four women, meeting after 20 years, could potentially have together. If only the writers had more fun while penning these scenes, they would have helped argue in favour of why Sukhee needed this “much-deserved” break. 

Anyway, back at the not-so-sukhee household, we see her husband and her daughter suffer without their ‘selfish’ wife/mumma. We see montages of their suffering, and then, they all get interventions of various kinds to realise that they’re wrong. No points for guessing what they do next. Yes, they mend their ways and try to make things better for Sukhee. See, I told you the film takes a familiar route.

At one point in the film, Sukhee participates in a horse race, although she has been out of touch for 20 years now. There are not even enough montages to show that she has prepared well for the race. It is like these portions are placed on a whim, just to state that a disregarded homemaker needs to do something victorious and grand to realise her worth. Do they give us a sense of achievement as well? Absolutely not. 

With layers like female friendships, a successful homemaker in Punjab, and a reunion that takes us to the past, Sukhee could have explored women's camaraderie and the importance of homemakers. However, it loses the plot and sacrifices the potential for exposition, and checkbox scenes to showcase feminism. Like one of Guru’s friends ironically points out, "There are too many films on feminism," and unfortunately, Sukhee ends up becoming a middling addition to that list.