Cricket and marriage get into an awkward tangle in Mr & Mrs Mahi, a sports melodrama that hinges on action on the field of play and plenty of reaction off it, mostly in the realms of a relationship that runs into tricky terrain.

The Sharan Sharma-directed film is about sport but it segues into a tale of marital discord when thwarted ambitions collide with suppressed emotions. The narrative is unusual to say the least but the treatment is devoid of any major departures from norm.

A man who has never had it easy resolves to help his wife revive and hone the rough-and-ready batting skills she acquired as a girl playing tennis ball cricket with the neighbourhood boys.

Rajkummar Rao and Janhvi Kapoor play the two cricket fanatics who become life partners. When the man fails to earn himself a second chance to make it big as a cricketer, the duo decides to channel their energy and experience into catapulting the lady, a diffident junior doctor in a Jaipur hospital, into the game’s big league.

Produced by Zee Studios and Dharma Productions and written by Sharan Sharma and Nikhil Mehrotra – the combination that created Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl – Mr & Mrs Mahi is, at best, a moderately engaging film that struggles with inconsistent pace.

It is simplistic and superficial in its exploration of sporting achievement and its personal and public spinoffs seen in the context of their repercussions on an apparently happy marriage of two amiable individuals with unresolved daddy issues. The film’s central emotional nub feels stretched.

The story is about a girl is coerced by her dad to give up cricket in order to prioritise her medical education, but the film revolves primarily around the man she marries. The latter is a failed cricketer forced by his domineering father to stop playing the game and join the family’s sports goods shop.

The two dour daddies, played by Kumud Mishra and Purnendu Bhattacharya, are the principal hurdles that Mahendra Agarwal and his wife Mahima Agarwal nee Sharma – the two names are abbreviated to Mahi – have to surmount as they seek to break free from familial shackles.

Cricket gives them courage and binds them but it also threatens to tear them apart. Their fight for freedom and fulfilment also involves coming to terms with success and the rewards that if offers by way of fame and recognition. Coached by her husband, Mahima makes rapid strides and wrests a spot in the Rajasthan women’s team.

With a mix of cross-batted strokes, orthodox off drives and cheeky switch-hits, the lady grabs her chances and quickly overshadows Mahendra. As she basks under the increasing media spotlight, the husband sulks and grumbles. He feels he deserves to be feted as a successful talent-spotter.

Mr & Mrs Mahi, at least parts of it, might have worked better had it stuck to a comic vein of the kind that it strikes when a disgruntled Mahendra makes reels to apprise the world of his role in the late-blooming Mahima’s rapid ascent.

Mr & Mrs Mahi never rises above the humdrum although it does have elements that render it passable as a relationship drama set against the backdrop of cricket.

For one, it does not subject the audience to the incessant babble of blabbermouth commentators and the shrieks and shouts of roaring spectators to drive home the ‘rousing’ impact of the sporting action on the screen.

The film falls back instead on-field chatter and an excitable coach’s instructions from beyond the boundary line as devices to ratchet up the drama and provide additional information on Mahima’s hits and misses.

Because the film focuses on the exploits of a single player, all the others, members of Mahima’s team as well as her opponents, are mere adjuncts thrown in to provide her with a platform to demonstrate her wares.

Off the field, Mahima is demure and tentative. On it, she is dynamite. She has a swing at every delivery that she faces. Hitting fours and sixes comes easy to her. If the ball is in the slot, I hit, she says. She gets struck by bouncers a couple of times. To be sure, she is down but never out.

But no matter how desperately the film tries, the excitement isn’t as intense and infectious as it is intended to be. It is way too easy to anticipate how things will turn out for Mahima and her husband who has a thing or two to prove to his doubting dad. That takes a great deal of the fun out of the proceedings.

The lead actors do their bit to keep us invested in the narrative and the emotions of the two principal characters. Rajkummar Rao, always on an even turf, delivers Mahendra’s recriminations, some directed at his father, others at his wife, with conviction even when the lines that the character speaks are riddled with self-pity.

Janhvi Kapoor’s Mahima does a good job of swaying between indecisive and assertive. She wields the willow like a plucky pro all right, but the marital pulls and pressures that she has to deal with lessen the female power that she is supposed to represent.

Mahima is projected as a lady whose fate is always in the hands of the men in her life – her father, her husband and the women’s team coach, whose impulsive ultimatums keep her on her toes. For the most part, she plays along, resigned to her lot.

When she eventually musters the gumption to say mujhe tumhari madat nahi chahiye (I do not need your help), one cannot but wonder why it took her so long to come to that decision.

That, in a sense, sums up Mr & Mrs Mahi. The film makes the right noises but not before putting the female protagonist through a grind devised by the men around her. And finally, it is not her dad but her husband’s father who has got to be mollified. The girl achieves a great deal but she can be happy only if her hubby and his dad are happy.

What the film conveys is that the female Mahi is incomplete without the male one. The conflicting and convoluted messaging is a mishit that lands nowhere. The result is a feeble gender equality tale that plods its way, exhaustingly at times, to a rather predictable end.

On May 7, 2022, the inaugural Netflix Is a Joke festival’s “Stand Out” show welcomed to the Greek Theatre stage 22 diverse LGBTQ+ comedians, including Eddie (Suzy) Izzard, Wanda Sykes, Lily Tomlin, Sandra Bernhardt, Rosie O’Donnell, Trixie Mattel, Tig Notaro, Sam Jay, Mae Martin, Joel Kim Booster, Fortune Feimster and Bob the Drag Queen. In the wings, documentary director Page Hurwitz kept cameras rolling and conversations flowing.

Premiering at the Tribeca Festival June 7 and reaching Netflix June 18, Hurwitz’s “Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution” dives deep into the history of stand-up trailblazers like Moms Mabley (out in the 1920s in her 20s) and Robin Tyler (the 1950s, age 16) who demanded equality.

By the late ’70s, Tomlin explains, “Comedy became an act of resistance,” in the face of Anita Bryant’s “Save Our Children” discrimination campaign. Bernhardt experienced a parallel battle with Ronald Reagan in the ’80s. (Historical turns of progress inevitably meet religious persecution.) As a young comic during the AIDS crisis, Todd Glass heard hurtful cracks from Eddie Murphy, Sam Kinison and Andrew “Dice” Clay. He grew fearful of being outed even as Margaret Cho, Rosie O’Donnell and Ellen DeGeneres rose to stardom through the ’90s.

Elsewhere, mustachioed history/political science buff Guy Branum lends context to jaw-dropping archival footage, Hannah Gadsby speaks to the rise of identity-forward material, and River Butcher and Solomon Georgio pay homage to Izzard’s influence around the globe.

On the local film front, comic and cartoonist Mo Welch’s “Dad Jokes,” a stand-up special/documentary partially filmed at the Lodge Room in Highland Park, debuts on YouTube June 14. Pioneering trans activist Tuesday Thomas gets the doc treatment with “The Trash Goes Out on Tuesday,” premiering June 12 at the Independent Filmmakers Showcase at Regal L.A. Live.

Elsewhere across Los Angeles:

Trixie Mattel’s packed calendar for WeHo Pride 2024 — “one of my favorite Prides in the universe” — includes June 2’s annual Santa Monica Boulevard parade. (The Comedy Store returns with its own comedian-packed float.) Enthuses Mattel, “I’ve attended, I’ve hosted, and I always have the time of my life.”

On June 7, Fifi Dosch hosts “a kind of on the hush-hush” but “very trans, very kinky comedy show and art exhibit” at a secret Van Nuys locale dubbed the Greenhouse. “We don’t advertise the address freely,” Dosch cautions of the “really fun trans refuge and party,” but for attendees who message @greenhouse.comedy.and.art on Instagram, “We’ll give the address if we can prove you’re not a cop.” Art show begins at 6 p.m. with comedy at 8. Previews Dosch, “I’ll be hosting in a hammer-and-sickle bikini.”

Cantiq

June 21 at Echo Park’s inclusive lingerie store, Sammy Mowrey’s “Boyfriend: A Queer Comedy Show” brings aboard Jake Noll and Pluto Papaya, “some of my favorite queer comedians in L.A., opening for me while I run my half-hour set.” Intending to tape the special within the next six to eight months, Mowry says, “I’m trying to get the feel of the flow.”

Comedian Cameron Esposito at the Bergamot Comedy Fest at the Crow on April 5, 2024.

(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)

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The Crow

In Santa Monica, a new Family Pride weekend launches with safe, all-ages events. June 14 at 7 and 9 p.m., the Crow’s signature “Storyectomy” series returns with community and allies getting personal alongside headliners like Cameron Esposito. June 15 at the Santa Monica Pier, the Crow hosts free “Fierce Fables: Drag Queen Pride — Family Edition!” storytelling at the Carousel from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., along with face painting, a Family Pride parade and dance numbers from Pickle Drag Queen, Pandora Boxx and Johnny Gentleman.

Back at the venue’s Bergamot Station home base that afternoon, programming includes family-friendly improv from Pull My Finger, a youth open mic, the “BYOB(Baby)” comedy show, music from singer-songwriter Abby Posner and “I Gotta Crow” stand-up with Nina Nguyen, Jeffrey Jay, Jeena Bloom, Zoe Zakson and Jackie Monahan.

Dynasty Typewriter

A double dose of “Josh Thomas: Let’s Tidy Up” comes clean in Westlake June 2 and 3, Natalie Rotter-Laitman does an hour June 17, Drew Droege’s new “Messy White Gays” play gets dirty June 24, and Nikki Levy hosts “Don’t Tell My Mother” June 25 with Rachel Scanlon, Vico Ortiz, Jen Kober and musical guests Ezra & the Pussyboys.

The board of directors/comedians at alt-comedy venue the Elysian Theater.

(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

The Elysian

Frogtown’s favorite comedy theater offers “Joe Castle Baker: Something to Think About” June 8, the descriptively named “Cameron Esposito Is Taping a Thing” June 9, “Twin Flames” June 16, “Big Dad Energy” June 27 and “Gentlemen’s Club” June 30. Longtime scene producer Sam Varela’s Naked Comedy brand further sweetens the Elysian calendar with June 4’s clowning collage “Self-Portraits With Shan Fahey” and June 8’s “Ahamed Weinberg Presents: Repentance,” a Downtown Women’s Shelter fundraiser with Esposito, Brendan Scannell and host Titi Lee.

Additional Naked Comedy productions include live-animated show “Picture This! Pride Edition” at the Virgil June 21 and Quei Tann’s “The QT Comedy Show!” Hollywood Fringe festival run with rotating lineups June 16, 21, 23, 27 and 29 at the Los Angeles LGBT Center.

Aparna Nancherla.

(Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times)

The Improv

On June 6 at the Lab, “Nori Reed and Lovers” gets busy with Sam Oh, EJ Marcus, Rachel Pegram and Aparna Nancherla. June 24’s “The Mav & Kalea Show” finds Mav Viola and Kalea McNeill doing time up top plus hosting four of their TBA comedy pals.

Largo
Before Ellen DeGeneres begins touring in late June en route to filming her final-ever special, two DeGeneres test dates were extended to four: June 4, 5, 12 and 13. Tig Notaro’s monthly “Tig Has Friends” slot momentarily shifts to Notaro and partner Stephanie Allynne’s “She Said, She Said” June 16.

Lyric Hyperion

From the heart of Silver Lake, “Haley Stiel Works on Some Things” June 1, Rachel Kaly brings “Major LOL Vibes” June 2, “Planet Courtney” takes orbit June 6, “Hannah Einbinder Presents Friends and New Material” June 21, “two rogue lesbian nuns take over” in “Divine Perversions: A Sapphic Mass” June 23 and Titi Lee turns “Good Girl Gone Baddie” June 30.

Nico’s

Atwater Village’s newbie wine shop only opened in January, but its Baby Battista bar venue has already become an alt hot spot. “Ever Mainard and Their Mostly Gay Friends” donate 100% of ticket sales to the Fund Texas Choice nonprofit June 11, with Mainard returning June 27 for solo-show-in-progress “Ottis.” (Mainard’s “Y’all Gay Podcast” co-host Ali Clayton releases debut comedy album “Country Queer” May 31, a mere 15 years into her career.) June 25 at Nico’s, Naked Comedy and Jeena Bloom’s “Cruising Comedy” promises “the hottest and hardest stand-up comedy action you can handle!”

UCB

The Hollywood sketch and improv mecca pits “Gays vs. Straights,” in a “gameshow death match” June 1, the venue’s first all trans/gender-nonconforming/nonbinary improv team delivers “QT’s Present…Joy!” June 2, Jesse Esparza and Dan Leahy a.k.a. “Two Loud Gays” perform “very loud, very gay” sketch June 4, the all-queer cast of “Conversion Camp” variety gets campy June 5, and “Dating Gayme” makes matches with a “1/2 Homosexual Dating Show, 1/2 Queer Improv Spectacular” June 16.

Summer Camp, 2024.

Written and Directed by Castille Landon.
Starring Diane Keaton, Kathy Bates, Alfre Woodard, Eugene Levy, Beverly D’Angelo, Victoria Rowell, Maria Howell, Dennis Haysbert, Nicole Richie, Josh Peck, Betsy Sodaro, Tom Wright, Ray Santiago, Taylor Madeline Hand, Kensington Tallman, Gabe Sklar, Lindsey Blanchard, Artemis Davis, Gabrielle Days, and Zachary Connor.

SYNOPSIS:

Follows Nora, Ginny, and Mary, three childhood best friends who used to spend every summer at a sleep away camp together. After years, when the opportunity to get back together for a summer camp reunion presents itself, they all seize it.

There is value in exploring time-tested friendships in old age, but for whatever reason, movies like Summer Camp are less concerned with depicting characters who feel human navigating believable drama and more fixated on going for cheap, lazy laughs that typically play up the silliness of elderly shenanigans.

These movies almost always seem to feature Diane Keaton, who is arguably the worst offender when it comes to playing characters over the top. Naturally, this is frustrating since co-stars Kathy Bates, Alfre Woodard, and Eugene Levy are at least bringing something authentic and relatable to their roles even if, at the end of the day, this is a ridiculous film about someone who secretly spends a quarter-million to reunite with cherished childhood friends who have struggled to stay in touch across the 50 years since they aged out of the titular summer camp.

That would be Jenny, a successful author of aggressively forward self-help books, now going by Ginny. Since childhood, she was always the one eager to live life freely whilst saving her new friends at summer camp from being bullied by the pretty girls, coming out of their shells, and trying out various activities like archery (which doesn’t go well and immediately gets a supervisor injured as a lame attempt at comedy.) Those friends are Diane Keaton’s Nora, who would go on to become a highly educated biochemist putting work before life, and Mary (Alfre Woodard), a nurse who gave up on more ambitious dreams of becoming a doctor to settle on married life that grew loveless and more like a second job over time.

Everyone is coming to the summer camp reunion, including past crush Stevie D (Eugene Levy, playing a likable wise gentleman) and even the bullies led by Beverly D’Angelo’s Jane. There is also an overexcited guard (Betsy Sodaro) put to the test as this is a movie where intended comedy comes from food fights breaking out, among other eye-rolling set pieces. Then there is a bumbling counselor, played by Josh Peck, who keeps getting reassigned to monitor different activities, constantly screwing things up in ways that, apparently, are also meant to be funny.

Written and directed by Castille Landon, the lessons shoved in one’s face throughout Summer Camp are nothing new for this subgenre and, unfortunately, come with the same flaws that generally sink these types of movies. Nora needs to be reminded how to ignore work and have fun (not happy about handing over all electronic devices at the camp, unable to check work-related emails). Mary needs to realize that her husband is nothing more than a dependent manchild who has deprived her of enjoying time with friends, and Ginny must realize that her readers are not the only ones who could use some reflection and self-help.

Smartly, there doesn’t appear to be a true primary character focus here, allowing the three friends ample time to reveal more about their lives while hanging out with others. Castille Landon doesn’t perceive them as more important to someone else. There are also a small handful of effective moments, whether it be from Mary arguing with her husband as he shows up to forcibly bring her home or Stevie vulnerably detailing how an obsessive dedication to work wasn’t worth it and how he now enjoys regularly spending time with his family even if he doesn’t necessarily like what they are doing for fun on any given day.

Summer Camp has nuggets of wisdom buried under atrocious humor, sometimes made more groan-worthy by the corniest needle drops. With a rewrite or two taking the material more seriously (which doesn’t mean eliminating jokes entirely), there is an interesting, refreshing story about old-age friendship to be told here. Instead, we get jokes about deer shit, Diane Keaton cluelessly using technology (which makes no damn sense considering how intelligent the character is supposed to be), and ham-fisted messaging. 

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embed/playlist