Review | Govinda Naam Mera – Mayhem Is My Middle Name

Govinda Naam Mera is a comedy thriller directed by Shashank Khaitan and produced by Karan Johar. It features Vicky Kaushal, Kiara Advani and Bhumi Pednekar.

General Rating

In a nut-shell:

Mayhem Is My Middle Name

It’s like a page from an old film magazine. Late action director Gopi (Wilson Tiger) had an extra-marital foray with Asha (Renuka Shahane), a junior artiste and dancer. Their offspring, Govinda Waghmare (Vicky Kaushal), has to legally battle his father’s first family over his multi-crore house, Asha Niwas. Vicky’s the bechara on all fronts. Wife Gauri (Bhumi Pednekar) is a battle-axe, even his maid Manju (Trupti Khamkar) treats him with disdain while girlfriend and fellow background dancer Suku (Kiara Advani) wants marriage. It’s mayhem all over. In the courtroom, at home and on the streets.

With small-timers Govinda and Suku imagining themselves in place of the hero and heroine and passing themselves off as choreographers, writer-director Shashank Khaitaan creates umpteen situations for song and dance. Typically, even a cab driver tries to get a break as a singer at the mention of a music video.   

A still from an old film as proof of Gopi’s marriage to Asha, Asha taking to the wheelchair and faking paralysis, Gauri and maid Manju ganging up and putting down Govinda, a gangster (Sayaji Shinde) and his junkie-son Sandy (Jeeva), Javed (Dayanand Shetty), the local policeman, looking for a corpse that’s disappeared a la Drishyam, and general craziness prevail. With a background score that never lets you forget you’re watching a comedy. 

Situations are written for fun and frolic. But where’s the fun? Tapori lingo rules, wife Gauri and her boyfriend make Govinda dance to a medley of ‘Bang bang’, ‘Kajra re’ and ‘Radha tera thumka’, there’s chaos with everybody jumping at one another’s throats, Sandy’s dad who got Govinda and Suku to choreograph a music for his son demands a refund, maid Manju fed on Crime Patrol episodes fancies herself a sleuth, cops, junkies and half-brothers weave in and out. 

There’s Ranbir Kapoor also making an appearance in one of the songs where Govinda and Suku are background dancers. 

And there’s Renuka Shahane hamming it up from the wheelchair, as she’s supposed to, demanding, ‘Aunty kisko bola re?’

Govinda and Gauri playacting cop-and-victim in the bedroom seems incongruent and flat given that his heart beats for Suku and he’s supposed to have a stormy equation with his wife.

In the calibrated mayhem, you can see Shashank’s laboured effort to replicate Priyadarshan’s template for humour. In his heyday, Priyadarshan was such an ace at creating rollicking chaos.  Can’t say the same for Shashank. 

Apart from most of the comedy not quite landing, what I really missed was foot-tapping tapori music, the ‘Disco mein jaaye’ kind that Govinda specialised in, especially since the situations had so much potential for rocking numbers and super dance moves. 

Once the dust settles, Shashank writes in a last scene in Thailand which spoon feeds the audience to explain every scene that has just happened, like it has to be all spelt out. 

Vicky Kaushal, Bhumi Pednekar and Kiara Advani make an average attempt to carry off the wackiness. Newcomer Jeeva plays wacko Sandy with easy confidence. 

As a time-pass family watch, streaming it on an OTT platform instead of risking a theatrical release was a sound business move by Dharma. 

Watch the trailer of Govinda Naam Mera:

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Mayhem Is My Middle NameReview | Govinda Naam Mera - Mayhem Is My Middle Name