Comedy Couple

Comedy Couple, the new Zee 5 original film starring Saqib Saleem and Shweta Basu Prasad in lead roles is claiming to be the story of India’s first comedy couple. But when you look at the movie in totality it is just the story of a young couple who are not sure about getting married and have issues finding a home in the city. This is a theme that has been getting repeated off late in a lot of movies. Comedy Couple would have been a successful attempt if they had given more focus on the stand-up comedy aspect of it to move the story forward, rather than making it an easily replaceable backdrop.

Deep Sharma and Zoya Batra is our lead couple. We are introduced to them as a couple in a live-in relationship who do stand-up comedy together and have just cracked a show and won their ticket to glory. Soon they get a flat for them to live and it was under a promise that they will show the owner their marriage certificate within a month. But this hide n seek element in their relationship sort of messes up their partnership and the film is showing us that rough patch in their career.

The chemistry between Saqib Saleem and Shweta Basu Prasad is extremely pleasant. We won’t really wonder how these two ended up in a relationship. For me, that is the only real positive from this movie. The rest of it feels like the makers were simply trying to follow the existing template. And just when they felt it was becoming far too clichéd, they throw in subplots that could make Comedy Couple look like a movie about Stand-up comedy by showing sequences where the hero is threatened by Police and certain leaders for hurting the sentiments. One may feel that police charging a case against a comedian and getting threats from goons for making fun of gomutra makes sense in a movie about contemporary stand-up comedy in India. I do agree with that. But here there is absolutely no blend there for those inclusions.

When you are pitching a movie as a movie about stand-up comedy, the writing, especially the stand-up comedy bits have to be sharp and impressive. And one would really wish to know what all happens in the backend of a performance. Even though we are shown the tensed entry of our lead couple to the stage in the very first sequence of the movie, what we get to see as their set in the whole movie, which the movie claims to be trending on YouTube, was just not hilarious or that smart. It almost felt like an unfair critique on Indian Stand-up comedy.

Nachiket Samant and his pool of writers are trying to place the lead couple in the midst of extreme characters. Deep’s parents are overtly conservative and Zoya’s mother and her close friend are caricature feminists. The only character in this ecosystem that felt more real was the manager friend of the duo and I felt the story would have been much better and more original if it was about these three and their struggle together.

Saqib Saleem manages to be that young guy who came from a conservative middle-class background to make it big in the city with a layer of insecurity always bothering him. Shweta Basu Prasad’s Zoya is the dominant and successful half in this unit. Zoya’s anger and affection were portrayed wonderfully by her and the chemistry of the duo deserved a better film. A lot of Instagram reels featuring both of them are going to appear for sure.

Pranay Manchanda as the manager of the couple was totally in character and his performance made him look like that relatable friend. The talented Rajesh Tailang was given a character that was poorly written and this poor writing of characters is evident in the case of the characters played by Pooja Bedi, Aadar Malik, etc.

Comedy Couple never felt like a test of patience or a terribly boring experience. It was just that there was nothing in it that felt unique or worth remembering. It is just a cheesy romantic comedy that luckily has a lead pair with likable chemistry (like those FilterCopy couples). If watching cozy couples in a totally unexciting story accounts for your description of guilty pleasure movies, this one is that movie.

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