The Mehta Boys Movie Cast/ Actors: Boman Irani as Shiv Mehta, Avinash Tiwary as Amay, Shreya Chaudhry as Zara, Puja Sarup as Anu, Harssh Singh.
The Mehta Boys Movie Director: Boman Irani
The Mehta Boys Movie Release Date: February 7, 2025
The Mehta Boys Movie Available On: Amazon Prime Video
The Mehta Boys Movie Released/ Available In Languages: Hindi
The Mehta Boys Movie Runtime: 118 minutes
The Mehta Boys Movie Critic Review:
Boman Irani just enriched his resume, adding to his impressive repertoire of performances, a sterling debut as writer-director.
Strained father-son relationships have consistently provided fodder to Hindi cinema. From the Dilip Kumar-Amitabh Bachchan cop-son drama of Ramesh Sippy’s Shakti to the violently successful Anil Kapoor-Ranbir stand-off in Animal, the stress comes in different forms.
Boman Irani’s contribution to this troubled bond birthed at home, is hot chocolate comforting. The loss of his wife of many years spells emotional upheaval on multiple fronts for retired typing school owner and teacher Shiv Mehta (Boman Irani). He has to respect the pact he’d made with his wife that the partner who outlives the other would move to America to stay with daughter Anu (Puja Sarup). It’s a wrench for him to bid goodbye to their home in Navsari, Gujarat. To the memorabilia and to memories, his gully cricket with little boys, his Gavaskar-signed bat, his manual typewriter.
Worse is in store when he has to spend 48 hours with Amay (Avinash Tiwary), his Mumbai-based architect-son. Father and son have had a long and icy equation, the source of the estrangement never fully explained. Except that Amay had hurt his mother by shifting to Mumbai. The equation is manifest in the family photo in Amay’s apartment – he with mom and sis, no dad.
But that bit of unexplained tension does not interrupt a family drama almost everyone can relate to. Done without Hindi cinema melodrama, Anu is the band aid between two emotionally hurt men who heal over two days… and a little more. A hitch in the ticketing and a missing passport play their parts in throwing father and son together in Amay’s top floor apartment in Mumbai with a leaky patch on the ceiling right above the bed.
Amay’s girlfriend and senior at work, Zara (Shreya Chaudhry) steps in to complete what Anu always tried to – to bring the two men close.
They bicker over everything. Over the handbrake (the dad’s hand automatically holds on it when son drives), over the over-reliance on computers over pen and paper, over a restaurant bill, over which address to give the passport office. But they also bond – over noodles and Laurel & Hardy. A fraction of Amay’s concern comes when he wades in flooded waters to meet dad who’s gone to the market. There’s a cheerful celebration on dad’s birthday and farewell dinner when Shiv tells Zara all that Amay told him not to. There’s a good-natured comment when there’s a hole in the ceiling and dad wisecracks, “It is a kamaal ka view.”
There is sophistication in Boman’s work, aided by Oscar-winning writer Alexander Dinelaris, that smoothly brings respect for traditional roots into identifiably contemporary lives. Shiv Mehta is more the hurt parent than the unrelentingly chauvinistic patriarch of this week’s other OTT releases, Mrs (based on The Great Indian Kitchen) and Rajshri’s Bada Naam Karega. In his first few miffed hours, Shiv sniffs at the glass-and-steel structures that make Mumbai and all other cities across the world look similar. With no character of their own.
Character, That is the one word that one would attach to the Mehta saga. Shiv has his eccentricities but he is no stomping man of the house who makes the rules. Zara is the senior at the workplace but she’s neither brassy nor the bend-to-please girlfriend. In fact, Boman does not linger on the senior-junior balance between Zara and Amay, she simply is the colleague and girlfriend who understands and pitches in to push him into becoming a man – at the office and with his father. At one point, Amay asks angrily, “Is he a man? Or a child?” Zara replies, “He’s your father.”
It sums up the respect, the emotion that comes wrapped in that relationship.
Boman pulls off his double task with the efficiency of a veteran, directing the drama and playing Shiv. Avinash Tiwary, Shreya Chaudhry and Puja Sarup are endearingly natural. Siddharth Basu is also a welcome sight as the big boss of Zara-Amay’s company.
The Mehta Boys Movie – Watch Or Not?: A healthy family watch where frost is melted with warmth.
The Mehta Boys Movie Review Score Rating: 3 out of 5 (i.e. 3/5)
The Mehta Boys Movie Official Trailer:
The Mehta Boys Official Trailer (Credits: Prime Video India)
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