Kanjoos Makhichoos Movie Review: Kunal Kemmu's Social Comedy is Miserly When It Comes to Delivering the Laughs! (LatestLY Exclusive)

Kanjoos Makhichoos Movie Review: Vipul Mehta's Kanjoos Makhichoos is a comedy-entertainer with a social message. The film is about a man who has to tackle couple of corrupt babus when a crisis hits the family. Jamunadas, played by Kunal Kemmu, is that man, a shopkeeper from Lucknow known for his frugal lifestyle. Even his own family, including wife Madhuri (Shweta Tripathi Sharma), is sick of his conservative ways of saving money. Kanjoos Makhichoos Streaming Date and Time: Here’s How To Watch Kunal Kemmu, Shweta Tripathi’s ZEE5 Film Online.

However, his miserliness has a noble intention. You see, Jamunadas wants to send his parents (Piyush Mishra and Alka Amin) for a Char Dham yatra. tragedy strikes in real, as well to Jamunadas' family, when the parents are at Kedarnath, and Uttarakhand suffers from one of the worst torrential rains. The parents go missing, and despite Jamunadas' best efforts, they couldn't be found.

When Jamunadas returns home, he is contacted by a government babu (late Raju Srivastava) who informs him that the government considers his parents to be 'dead' and advises him to accept the monetary compensation being offered to the kin of the deceased. Jamunadas has no idea that accepting the money will cause him more trouble than he anticipated.

Watch the Trailer of Kanjoos Makhichoos:

Kanjoos Makhichoos reminded me of Santhanagopalam, a 1994 Malayalam film starring the late Thilakan, Jagadish, and Balachandran Menon. It follows a family dealing with the disappearance of their patriarch, as well as the consequences of a development that brings out the greediness in a couple of them. Kanjoos Makhichoos seems to have borrowed the plot, incorporated a real-life tragedy in the narrative and used it to address the red-tapism and corruption in the government machinery.

Does this make Kanjoos Makhichoos a better movie?

No.

Kanjoos Makhichoos is just plain boring, which is unfortunate for a comedy. The intriguing premise and the actors' efforts to elevate the proceedings should have saved the film, but it didn't. Kanjoos Makhichoos fails most when the humour isn't delivered correctly. The jokes aren't written well enough. One such prime example is the 'apple' joke that the film proudly displayed in the trailer, in which Madhuri complains about Jamunadas not buying her a 'apple' and he thinks she's talking about actual apples. The joke should have sounded better the other way around, but Madhuri's insistence on referring to the iPhone as a "apple" is simply the film's pathetic attempt at humour. Kanjoos Makhichoos Song Namo Hari: Kunal Kemmu and Shweta Tripathi Spend Time with His Parents as a Family in This Touching Video – Watch.

Things should have turned better when the parents go missing and Jamunadas has to deal with corrupt babus, but the melodramatic treatment and the stretched portions do little to elevate the situation. A slight spike in interest happened in me, when a major mid-film twist came in (though the memory of the Malayalam film made sure I was prepped for it). Jamunadas' situation post that should have done Kanjoos Makhichoos better, but once again the flat comedy and flatter manner in which Jamunadas handles his adversaries is plain juvenile leading to a limp conclusion.

Final Thoughts

Kanjoos Makhichoos is a dull comedy that couldn't benefit from Kunal Kemmu's sprightly performance and Shweta Tripathi's refreshing comic turn. Kanjoos Makhichoos is streaming on Zee5.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 24, 2023 05:45 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).