Modern Love Mumbai Review: Despite Hansal Mehta, Shonali Bose's 1st Class Local Ride, Bombay Seems Missing

May 13,2022

Mumbai might not be everyone’s cup of cutting chai. But sip by sip, night after night, the city makes you her own. Modern Love Mumbai seems like a cutting chai. It might start off on a strange, unsure note but as you reach the last episode, you seem to find that one chapter that you resonate with.

The concept of Modern Love Mumbai is adapted from the hit Amazon Prime Video series Modern Love from the US. Much like the international version, the stories in the Mumbai edition are inspired by essays from the New York Times column.

The Mumbai adaptation roped in Alankrita Shrivastava, Vishal Bhardwaj, Hansal Mehta, Dhruv Sehgal, Shonali Bose, and Nupur Asthana to focus on different concepts of love. However, unfortunately, the concept of each story in the Mumbai version of Modern Love overlaps and the core subject seems lost.

To simplify things, let’s break each episode of Modern Love Mumbai:

My Beautiful Wrinkles: Adapted, written and directed by Alankrita Shrivastava, My Beautiful Wrinkles stars Sarika as a 60-year-old Dilbar who bonds with a 20-something Kunal played by Danesh Razvi. While Dilbar helps him with his interviews, Kunal starts getting sexually attracted to her. Soon a box of the past is reopened as Dilbar’s old, rusty baggage comes into the spotlight.

Though the story is different, it seemed a little all over the place. The story has a rugged switch from one point to the other making for uneven storytelling. But Sarika gracefully shoulders the story, urging you to stick on until the end when the short story truly comes into form.

Baai: Hansal Mehta seemingly steps out of his comfort zone with Baai. The filmmaker, with writer Ankur Pathak co-writing the screenplay, explores familiar and unfamiliar territories. Baai revolves around Manzu (Pratik Gandhi), a gay man from a conservative household. While he has his share of problems with his family owing to his sexuality, his Baai aka grandmother (Tanuja) has no idea about it and dearly loves him.

He moves out of his house, and finds love in Goa (Ranveer Brar) but returns home to meet his Baai one last time on her death bed. The family warns him to not speak of his sexuality, making him feel caged. Does he come out to his grandmother? You’ll have to watch the movie for it. Baai gives you a feature film experience with drama, romance, music and even dramatic weddings involved in it. Hansal delivers an emotional tale with Pratik and Ranveer shining throughout the tale.

Mumbai Dragon: In an interview with News18.com, Vishal Bhardwaj said that Mumbai has been ‘over-exploited’, and yet, he found a corner that wasn’t fully explored by the celluloid. Mumbai Dragon puts the spotlight on the extremely small community of Chinese immigrants and the Kwan Kung Temple. With the help of Yeo Yann Yann, Meiyang Chang, Wamiqa Gabbi and Naseeruddin Shah, Vishal narrates the tale of Sui (Yeo Yann Yann) grappling with her only son moving far away from her. Her love is also accompanied by the fear that her son might also be distancing from the family’s roots.

Full credits to Vishal for showing a different side of Mumbai. It is evident that Vishal wanted to keep the story simple and straight, adding no unnecessary highs and lows. However, at a certain point, the story becomes too flat. I did crave a little element of drama, considering the mother is shown as a dramatic person. Yeo Yann Yann played the part effortlessly.

I Love Thane: It is the ‘little things’ Dhruv Sehgal uses in his tales that make his stories stand out. I Love Thane revolves around a 30-something Saiba (Masaba Gupta), who is trying to find love on dating apps, and a government official Parth (Ritwik Bhowmik), with whom she has undertaken a public garden project. Living in the suburbs of Mumbai, Saiba travels a long distance for work. At first, she complains about it but eventually, she begins to enjoy the company of Parth.