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.

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

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NOW STREAMING ON:

Artificial Intelligence is out to nuke the world, but not if a (checks notes) data analyst has anything to say about it in Atlas, now streaming on Netflix worldwide. This should be both topical and fun, and star Jennifer Lopez and director Brad Peyton (San Andreas, Rampage) initially seem up to the task. But they fail to shoulder the burden of a incredibly dull and shockingly unimaginative script.

Atlas opens in an unspecified future where interstellar travel is now possible, and the Los Angeles skyline has a few new skyscrapers, including Prague’s TV Tower. Three decades back, an artificial being named Harlan (a robotically over-the-top Simu Liu) became sentient and attempted to wipe out humanity, killing three million people before taking it on the lam across the galaxy, Roy Batty-style.

Lopez is the titular Atlas Shepherd, who has a special connection to Harlan: she’s his sister! Yes, mom (Lana Parrilla) “invented” Harlan before he went genocidal, and so Atlas now bears her burden, hunting the robot across the universe. In an early scene, she finally locates him after tricking AI associate Casca Decius (Abraham Popoola) into giving up the intel using this one simple trick all robots and 9-year-old children hate.

Harlan’s hiding out in the Andromeda Galaxy, just a short 2.5 million light year ride from Earth. So here’s the plan, formulated by stodgy General Jake Boothe (Mark Strong) and gung-ho Colonel Elias Banks (Sterling K. Brown): fly a planet-destroying nuclear payload to Harlan’s hideout… but only as Plan B. Instead, capture Harlan alive for, uh, reasons. Nevermind that by the time you need to employ Plan B, Harlan will have his hands on a nuclear payload capable of destroying Earth.

We have questions. It’s established in the early scenes with Casca that you cannot “kill” AI. You can kill their physical form, but not the intelligence that forever lives on a cloud. And even the physical form can be easily replicated. So what’s the point of the mission? Isn’t the threat AI sentience itself, and not the physical Simu Liu robot?

Anyway, Atlas herself, the Jack Ryan in this sci-fi Clancyverse, joins the mission as the world’s foremost Harlan expert. Despite a deep mistrust of AI, she soon discovers that her only chance of survival will be to bond with an AI operating system named Smith (voiced by Gregory James Cohan) that operates her giant mech suit.

Helpfully, this AI bond between Atlas and Smith is displayed for the audience in a LED bar that slowly rises during the course of the movie, reaching the crucial 100 percent when Atlas opens up via climactic expository dialogue. Even though, we assume, the AI can read her mind at all times. What’s the point of the neural link if she needs to tell Smith everything verbally?

Atlas is at its modest best during scenes with Lopez alone in the mech, slowly forming a bond with the artificial intelligence. Smith asks her whether she likes pie or cake, and harvests an alien flower for her. Awww. Nevermind that the last AI system she bonded with ended up killing millions of people. They must have patched the genocide bug with this newest update.

There is some fun to be had in a big, schlocky would-be sci-fi epic like this, but Atlas takes itself way too seriously with big teary-eyed speeches and emotional swells on the soundtrack. Lopez is more than capable of carrying something like this, but she doesn’t seem to know what kind of movie she’s in; one could imagine frequent Peyton collaborator Dwayne Johnson bringing the right kind of self-awareness to the role.

Atlas looks mostly great, with a certain car commercial slickness, though even the high production values seem to abandon the film as it climaxes in a hopelessly pedestrian nondescript warehouse on this strange new alien world. Netflix spent an alleged $100 million on this movie, but by the finale, it might as well be Cosmic Sin.

Worst of all, Atlas fails to capitalize on the topical subject that supposedly drives its narrative. AI can be both bad and good, it seems to be saying, as it argues for acceptance of the technology. Of course, when the bad is the deaths of millions and the good is the preservation of a flower and a friendly how-do-you-do, we wonder if JLo isn’t too hasty in learning stop worrying and love the algorithm.