Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
Would you take part in a game where your phone is expected to be public property from dinner until morning at a party with close friends? Everybody is allowed to view any new texts or emails that participants get during the duration of the game, and all calls must be accepted on loudspeaker for others to listen in. The same goes for voice messages too. That’s the primary premise of the 2024 Bollywood comedy Khel Khel Mein, where a group of seven friends unlock their phones for a night of fun and learn unexpected things about each other.
Written and directed by Mudassar Aziz, Khel Khel Mein is a remake of the 2016 Italian movie Perfect Strangers. The film opens by introducing Akshay Kumar’s character Rishabh Malik, a smart, suave plastic surgeon attending his sister-in-law’s wedding with author wife Vartika (Vaani Kapoor) in Jaipur. The two gather at their hotel suite with two other married couples and a single friend to play the phone game. Ammy Virk and Taapsee Pannu portray a couple who share the same name—Harpreet—so they ridiculously have each other’s name saved as ‘Harpreet Male’ and ‘Harpreet Female’ on their phones. Aditya Seal and Pragya Jaiswal play the third couple, Naina and Samrat, while Fardeen Khan is the seventh participant, a divorced sports coach who was supposed to bring his new girlfriend along but turns up solo.
While not riotously funny, Khel Khel Mein has a fun first half, mixing humor with some moments of mystery, alluding to secrets some of the friends are clearly hiding from their spouses and even each other. All the men are extremely reluctant to participate in the game, but all the women instantly volunteer to unlock their phones for the night. “Men have a code, they never rat out each other’s affairs,” Vartika says before the game starts, hinting that she might not trust her own man. Infidelity, infertility, stalking, lying, and a whole bunch of other issues are explored, which leads to the case of ‘biting off more than one can chew’ for the script.
Akshay Kumar was in his comfort zone, his character Rishabh Malik is a rehashed version of his several other ‘confident charmer’ characters. And even though Khel Khel Mein should’ve ideally split its 2-hour 15-minute runtime more evenly among the friends, Akshay Kumar is served a lion’s share of the screen space, while others are scattered with what’s leftover. Vaani Kapoor is measured in her delivery as an author trying to balance her work with family life, but Rishabh makes it hard by constantly name-dropping his first wife’s name in their conversations. Despite a typical one-dimensional role, Taapsee Pannu stands out best in the ensemble cast by making Harpreet endearingly relatable. Last seen playing the scheming seductress in Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba, Taapsee is comedic-cute as a small-town Punjabi girl struggling to keep up with her husband’s ‘fancy’ English-speaking friends. Aditya Seal and Pragya Jaiswal were forgettable in their parts; they simply do their bits and evoke no emotions in the viewers whatsoever. Fardeen Khan’s performance as Kabir is quite lack-luster, and his subplot feels shoehorned in, as if to fulfill a token gesture towards modern themes the film tries to address.
The cinematography and screenplay are visually engaging, with most of the story unfolding at the lavish wedding venue. The wedding theme in Khel Khel Mein also allows the creators to seamlessly weave a few songs into the story. However, the opening song, Hauli Hauli, where all the couples shake a leg, sounded more like a house mix for clubs when it should’ve been more festive in spirit. Composed by Guru Randhawa, it’s a fun song, but it lacks the upbeat wedding tone of songs like Sadi Gali (Tanu Weds Manu) or Dilliwali Girlfriend (Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani).
Objectively, a lot of what happens in Khel Khel Mein doesn’t make sense, like the characters receiving emails from companies or hospitals post-10 pm. Besides, how is it that all seven of them manage to get troublesome messages on the same night they decide to open up their phones? That’s obviously a bit of a stretch, but sure, we need to let go of some logic to be able to enjoy a well-constructed comedy. So all right, I was open to that, which is why I found this movie a lot more entertaining than if I had been in a more demanding mood. The film concludes with Akshay Kumar’s Rishabh delivering a wedding speech about marriage being a partnership where communication is key, though it feels somewhat hollow. The overarching message seems to be: partners will mess up, and you either forgive them or move on from their deceit.
Rating: 6 out of 10. Watch Khel Khel Mein on Netflix.
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