Mast Mein Rehne Ka is pretentious, yet purposeless

- ADVERTISEMENT -

Jackie Shroff puts his heart, art, soul and more into this performance, perfectly portraying a man in his sixties, but it’s a lost cause. The pretentious Mast Mein Rehne Ka aims (or claims) to be a lofty advocate for the cause of smiling through life and being always happy and content, but emerges as a purposeless anything-goes saga that meanders through two parallel tracks with only a tenuous link between them.

Kamath (Jackie) is a retired Railway official—the claim is that he is from the CRPF or Central Railway Protection Force—but he hardly justifies the toughness, but for his daily fitness exercise. A loner without a family, he does not converse with anyone except himself. In the nearby park where he goes for a walk, he once meets Mrs. Handa (Neena Gupta), a Punjabi woman of around his age, who teaches him to smile amidst his discontent and self-inflicted unhappiness.

She has just returned from Canada where her son and his family are settled and raves about her granddaughter. But internally, she is also unhappy as she was treated there like some kind of unpaid governess to the kid. And as Kamath and Mrs. Handa keep meeting, a bond grows.

Then we have the tailor Nanhe (Abhishek Chauhan), ever the loser, who has to make ends meet and he chooses the easy way of robbing homes, without any particular result. He takes a fancy to a street-smart streetwalker Rani (Monisha Panwar), who is very contented with her lot. She reciprocates, and a time comes when she does much more for him.

The ups and downs in their lives and relationships form the tepid base of this story. The link between Kamath and Nanhe happens when he first comes to commit a theft in his home and ends on a positive note when Kamath forgives Nanhe for a reason that is quite valid.

Abhishek Chauhan gives a nuanced performance as Nanhe and Monika Panwar is excellent as the firebrand girl who has her own code in life. Neena Gupta goes through her graph of a feisty Punjabi woman, a mother in emotional turmoil and a woman under her dominating son’s influence with an effortless turn. The rest of the cast is purely functional, including the likable Faisal Malik as Nanhe’s close friend.

The music, as in Dhak Dhak, is an intrusive malady of songs rather than melody. Technically adequate, the film suffers from a defective core and there is little the director Vijay Maurya can do about it. Trouble is, the director, who also does a cameo, has written and produced this exercise in futility as well.

Rating: ** (Just About)

Amazon Prime Video presents Amazon MGM Studios & Made in Maurya’s Mast Mein Rehne Ka  Produced and written by:Vijay Maurya & Payal Arora  Directed by: Vijay Maurya  Music: Anurag Saikia, Shailendra Barve & Kaam Bhaari Starring: Jackie Shroff, Neena Gupta, Abhishek Chauhan, Monika Panwar, Alauddin Khan, Faisal Malik, Rakhi Sawant, Rajesh Chahar, Anushka Goel, Priyadarshan Jadhav, Saba Saudagar, Vijay Maurya & others