‘Khoobsurat’ Isn’t Your Typical Comfort Watch
The 2014 film pays homage to a time when everyday families — and unapologetic women — were front and center.
“It’s been two years! Forget a husband, she doesn’t even have a boyfriend!” an indignant Manju (the marvelous Kirron Kher, the epitome of the Bollywood mother) declares to her family at the dinner table. “You’re famous! You work in the IPL! You could have at least had something printed in the papers about an affair with a young cricketer!”
And so we meet the Chakravarty family as Manju airs her grievances about her sole, very eligible daughter. Dr. Mili Chakravarty (Sonam Kapoor) might have a Bengali last name, thanks to her father, but her mother is definitively Punjabi. This means, at least in this movie, the family is loud, says everything openly, and loves eating chicken.
Though Shashanka Ghosh-directed Khoobsurat (2014) made waves for being the first for many things — Pakistani actor Fawad Khan’s debut in Bollywood, for which he won a Filmfare, and being a rare Disney production in India — what made it notable was its homage to Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Khubsoorat (1980). Namely, a time when things were easier, when a family could sit down to watch a film together, and when nothing too bad ever happened. Over 10 years later, the most recent Khoobsurat, which made back over three times its budget, remains a comfort watch, one we can’t help but rewatch over and over again.