The pleasure of a whodunit lies more in savouring the delicacies offered by its characters rather than finding which one of them has an odd aftertaste. Adajania with writers Ghazal Dhaliwal and Suprotim Sengupta weaves characters that, although at times outlandish, still remain funny and interesting. Credit also goes to Anuja Chauhan’s book Club You To Death on which the film is based.Some performances, however, don’t hold up to their characters. Tisca Chopra as Roshni Batra is amusing only by excess. Her portrayal of a Delhi aunty is impersonation at max. Sara plays Bambi playing Sara. Her eyebrow raises and goofy demeanor isn’t any different from the actor’s public persona. Vijay Varma as the one-sided lover serves as a red herring at most.In contrast, Pankaj Tripathi is hilariously good as the cop. His performance might give flashbacks of his previous works (most recently Kadak Singh) but the actor brings an adorable sweetness to Bhavani Singh. Dimple Kapadia serves a lesson on how to make exaggerated characters sing while Karisma Kapoor balances grace with the comical and Sanjay Kapoor plays an effective insecure Maharaja.More than the performances and the plot, in Murder Mubarak Adajania scores with tidbits of absurdist humour. Notice how all the waiters at the club are senior citizens, being summoned by a bell by the patrons and being called ‘boys’. While telling an emotional story about his subordinate, Tripathi’s Bhavani puts in an unnecessary but hilarious detail of his junior practising belly dance at night. Karisma’s Shehnaaz steps back and stands in front of a huge fan, head tilted, hair flying, like she is a 90s heroine.The Delhi satire, however, is as loud as Delhi itself. Murder Mubarak isn’t subtle or nuanced. The jarring background music by Sachin-Jigar often hammers humour in case you missed it. The ‘Us vs Them’ narrative feels inorganic and borrowed from the Knives Out franchise. At a run time of 142 minutes, the allure of the mystery starts fading. The film opens free-spirited and then suddenly morphs into a tight thriller. To quote Radhika Apte’s V Naidu in Monica, O My Darling, “Loosen the story a bit. With feel.”Director: Homi AdajaniaWriters: Gazal Dhaliwal and Suprotim SenguptaCast: Pankaj Tripathi, Sara Ali Khan, Karisma Kapoor, Sanjay Kapoor, Vijay Varma, Dimple KapadiaRating: 3/5
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