Film: Good Newwz

Director: Raj Mehta

Cast: Kareena Kapoor Khan, Akshay Kumar, Kiara Advani, Diljit Dosanjh

Good Newwz is a new-concept comedy that plays around with nuances and humour of a kind that does not disrespect anybody.

It raises a few important questions pertaining to contemporary relationships—like the need to have kids because of societal pressure—but never really engages with them. Where Kareena and Akshay play a married couple who are handling ‘need-to-have-baby pressure’ post 7 years of marriage, they mostly react and not react to situations that called for better answers.

Raj Mehta’s directorial debut leaves you with smiles and some drama. Good Newwz epitomizes a complete family entertainer, a genre that has progressed from derogative remarks on marriage, women, etc to something much more.

There is a certain freshness in dialogue, though the conventional stereotyping as far as characters are concerned remains the same.

Diljit in his literal urban-Pendu avatar is a delight to watch. Kiara Advani takes a lot more time to settle in and performs much better in the second half.

Akshay Kumar played a variation of himself from his character in Heyy Babyy and other such comedy masalas’; not a lot of nuances as far as his performance was concerned while Kareena played her part well. Her character could have been better sketched out as far as tackling some difficult questions is concerned. She played the righteous, independent woman who only desperately wants to be a mother.

Tisca Chopra and Adil Hussain appeared in a guest appearance as a doctor pair Mrs & Mr Joshi respectively. Adil is a delight to watch as an eccentric doctor who takes pride in the godly power of making children in labs through in-vitro fertilization.

The pace of Good Newwz is well sketched out. It is fairly predictable to see the comedy turn into family drama in the second half as was the need to have songs inserted into the screenplay to give the audience a run for their ticket money.

The show-not-tell parts were well-established through the confusion that ensued with the sperm-mix up at Mr Joshi’s clinic between the two pairs, Kareena-Akshay and Diljit-Kiara.

Other than that, most of what appeared on screen were formulaic.

All in all, Good Newwz is a film worth watching not just because of its actors’ performances but also because of something new that Hindi cinema wants to project on screen in terms of the concept of IVF (in-vitro fertilization). Anything new is welcome in the family-comedy genre so long as it is not ridiculing and glorifying the age-old misogynist humour. After all, the platter on which you wish to serve something new should have a relatable element for the audiences to identify with. And, Good Newwz is the film that perfectly blends the new and the relatable, without ever crossing over into the territory of radical questions that we hope to see dealt with in the works of a separate branch of filmmakers in India.

Rating: 2.5