The Great Indian Family Movie Review: A timely tale that needed a better telling

What is a family comedy without the messaging? Probably a Priyadarshan film. But what is a family comedy with only the messaging? An extended, mostly plain, PSA. Vicky Kaushal headliner The Great Indian Family takes on an essential topic, opportune for the times we live in. What happens after it is revealed that the scion of a Hindu, priestly family was actually born a Muslim? Ballsy premise. But TGIF, at times, forgets it is also supposed to be an entertaining film with better wit and humour than showing a bunch of youths confusing Allahu Akbar as a Muslim greeting.

Cast: Vicky Kaushal, Kumud Mishra, Manushi Chhillar, Manoj Pahwa, Yashpal Sharma, Srishti Dixit

Director: Vijay Krishna Acharya

The film begins like most small-town comedies do. The protagonist, in a quirky voiceover, introduces us to the eccentricities of his town and his family. Ved Vyas Tripathi aka Bhajan Kumar (Vicky Kaushal) is Balrampur’s pooja popstar. His father and family patriarch Siya Ram Tripathi (Kumud Mishra) is the local head priest. There are other family members too, including influencer Srishti Dixit as Bhajan’s sister Gunja, but except Manoj Pahwa nobody gets a character development as such. An anonymous letter sent to the Tripathi household reveals that Bhajan is not related to them by blood and was probably born a Muslim. They brush it off at first but soon differences arise. It all ends up with Bhajan leaving the house to live with a friend in the adjoining ‘Momedan’ tola.

The greatest thing about The Great Indian Family remains its set-up. There are some pertinent, thought-provoking moments though, like the one where Vicky’s Bhajan asks whether he “looks like a Muslim.” There is a gratifying scene in which Bhajan and his two sidekicks get kicked by the love interest Jasmeet (Manushi Chillar) for pretending to be members of an “Anti-Majnu squad” and intimidating her Muslim friend. But to balance it off, there are some corny ones too like Bhajan thinking that all Muslims eat with their left hand or Vicky talking about a “surgical strike” before entering a Muslim area. Sometimes in the bid to have a conversation with the lowest common denominator, TGIF becomes too simplistic and almost caricaturish of the community it wants to portray in the right light.

Vicky Kaushal’s charming presence comes to the rescue at times. He has an innocent eccentricity which is infectious. He is bright and alluring even while mouthing absurdist song lyrics (‘Kanhaiya Twitter Pe Aaja’). Kumud Mishra is impactful as the rock-solid but soft-hearted father. But performances alone can’t shoulder this at-times preachy film. With a logline like this, I wished it was more searching, more subtle and more satirical. It felt too structural in its output and also a bit…safe. Bhajan’s love interest is a Punjabi girl and not a Hindu (that would have made it into a Hindu-Muslim love story and would have ruffled some feathers). When Bhajan sits down to eat with his Muslim friends at an eatery and asks them how they eat, there is no mention of meat. Safely, a veg dish is ordered for him. To get back to his family, Vicky’s Bhajan meets them, dressed up in a pathani suit, donning a skull cap, but he never enters a mosque. The film tries to point out the othering of a community but doesn’t let its characters understand them via the essentials: food and marriage.

In many instances, TGIF felt like a “know your fellow Muslim neighbour” pamphlet. It jumped from one dramatic sequence to another, without enough humour to glue them together. As a story, it felt like it was trying to fit the narrative in order to give its moral viewpoint at the end. In several instances in the film, Bhajan mentions how he was always good at the practical. The film, sadly, works only in theory.