Mrs Undercover movie review: This spy comedy lacks both laughs and thrills despite Radhika Apte's best efforts

Mrs Undercover

Director: Anushree Mehta

Cast: Radhika Apte, Sumeet Vyas, Rajesh Sharma, Laboni Sarkar, Saheb Chatterjee, and Roshini Bhattacharya

Where to watch: Zee5

Rating: 2 stars

Mrs Undercover has an interesting premise, a talented lead actress, some really competent support cast, and a short runtime. How a movie manages to bore and annoy you despite all this needs to be thoroughly investigated. Probably not by the protagonist though. Radhika Apte’s spy comedy is a dull, listless affair that so seamlessly turns into a snoozefest that by the end, you can see the so-called twists coming from a mile away.

Set in Kolkata, Mrs Undercover is the story of Durga, a housewife who is also an undercover secret agent. She had been embedded in this cover over a decade ago and then forgotten by her agency – Special Force. Now, the emergence of a serial killer who kills strong independent women, the agency brings her out only to realise she is a clumsy fool, who is no good at investigation. How Durga manages to find her feet and investigate the mystery forms the crux of the plot.

On paper, Mrs Undercover is a good film. But the execution has been shoddy. Apart from Radhika Apte’s earnestness and a few action sequences, it never holds your attention. The sheer number of plot holes that are ignored, forgotten, or simply glazed over are too hard to miss. The story drops logic and, at times, feels like it was amateurishly written. The plot moves from point A to point B without ever rooting it in the real world. The fact that it had a real-world issue and setting to begin with makes that a very big miss. That is, perhaps, the biggest reason that what should be a relatable character never seems so, because the setting she is in, seems too silly to be true.

Mrs Undercover takes is reminiscent of several shows and films from the 80s and 90s in its execution. The trouble is that it does not remind one of the better productions from that age but the more amateurishly done. The characters are not well fleshed out, the dialogue is superficial, the presentation is over-the-top and the entire vibe is a little more amateur than it should be. Director Anushree Mehta probably had the right idea about the tone but I get the feeling that she let it get too loose and free. The characters had to look clumsy and not the film.

The performances are also nothing to write home about, with the exception of Radhika Apte. The actress makes Durga’s character her own and her transformation from the clueless, bumbling housewife to the more confident, smooth agent is nice to see. A few scenes in which she erupts are well written and equally well performed. But these high points are too few and far in between. Sumeet Vyas, as the serial killer Common Man, tries his best but is let down by some shoddy writing and a unidimensional character. Rajesh Sharma’s talents are wasted here as well.

Mrs Undercover ends on a cliffhanger, almost like a promise of a sequel. But given how the two hours before that feel, the promise seems more like a threat. I do hope that if a sequel does materialise, the team of Mrs Undercover learns from its mistakes here and delivers a better product, one that does justice to the potential this story has.