Review: 'Mummy Punjabi' is a melodramatic TV serial on the big screen

Film: Mummy Punjabi
Director: Pammi Somal
Cast: Kirron Kher, Kanwaljeet Singh, Jackie Shroff, Viraf Patel, Divya Dutta and others
Rating: *1/2
 
Right before the screening, Pammi Somal chitchats with us about how the idea for her film came from her observations about her surroundings.

After watching the film, I really want to know if Pammiji spends her time watching too many soaps.

What is Mummy Punjabi? Well, it is the story of Babyjee aka Mummyjee (Kher) who likes to nag her husband (Singh) to have her name added to their bank accounts and openly calls him boring as she flirts with her childhood friend Mannu (Shroff) who still holds a flame for her.

She is quirky because she keeps her sons on a tight leash and her daughter has all the freedom in the world. Obsessed with getting a simple, Indian girl for one of her sons and an NRI doctor for the other, Mummyji gets herself exactly what she wants, but after the weddings she realizes that her bahus aren’t what they pretended to be and, well nothing happens except for a little more crying and howling and gossiping with and crying on the shoulders of the maid Munniya (Dutta).
 
The film has giggle-worthy moments, but the cast speaking straight-out-of-school-essays English completely ruins these moments and a wishy-washy plot ideal for a television serial only makes you cringe and cringe a little bit more.

What’s worse? Viraf Patel, who once used to be totally drool-worthy (remember him in the TV show Mahi Ve?) is a complete let down as one of Mummyji’s sons.
 
The film’s plot goes nowhere, the music is just about okay, the styling is horrid (brown knee length boots with a blue dress?), the dialogue is full of grammatical errors (Mummyji speaks *in* English apparently. Grrrr!).
 
I don’t know what to make of the fact that this masterpiece releases the same weekend as Salman Khan’s Bodyguard and Anurag Kashyap’s A Girl in Yellow Boots.