Saqib Saleem and Shweta Basu Prasad are sincere and appealing in this Nachiket Samant film about a pair of stand-up comedians who are trying to make their relationship work.
Comedy Couple review: Amiable rom-com about pitfalls of living and working together
Cinestaan Rating
Release Date: 21 Oct 2020
Sonal Pandya | Mumbai, 21 Oct 2020 12:30 IST
Stand-up comedy generally is a solo journey on stage, but Deep Sharma (Saqib Saleem) and Zoya Batra (Shweta Basu Prasad) stand out on the circuit as the ‘Comedy Couple’. These two up-and-coming comedians live and work together and are trying to take their careers to the next level while society and their parents play spoilsport, asking about their intentions and ambitions for the future.
Saqib’s Deep is a habitual liar who is constantly getting into scrapes and hasn’t learnt his lesson yet. Zoya is the more responsible one in the relationship but somehow goes along with Deep’s schemes. Both are rebelling against their parents’ expectations.
While Deep’s parents (Rajesh Tailang and Madhu Sachdeva) believe he is single and working in an IT firm, Zoya craves the security of a normal, average relationship unlike her artist mother Zohra (Pooja Bedi) who lives in Paris and considers all men to be faithless like her ex-husband.
The couple seems committed to their relationship and their comedy career, until a set of obstacles piles up too high that they can’t overcome it. The witty screenplay by Bikas Ranjan Mishra touches upon many topical issues from the discrimination faced by live-in partners to censorship in comedy from ordinary citizens whose sentiments are offended.
There’s also a sly dig at news channels who make mountains out of molehills. Once, Deep gets hauled off to jail when a political outfit takes offence at a joke they make comparing relationships to beverages, with gau mutra (cow urine) being the punchline. This comes back to haunt Deep yet again in a hilarious sequence when a local dairy owner forces him to apologize.
While the couple isn’t shown working on their material a lot, the film does acknowledge the scary world they inhabit where they can be jailed for a simple joke. For a feature shot in a post-COVID world, Comedy Couple tends to be escapist, showing its principal characters engaging in activities that have been severely hindered in real-life owing to the coronavirus. Samant and cinematographer Riju Das' machinations see the lead couple in a crowded dairy and courthouse, among other settings.
The leads are sincere and appealing as a couple just trying to navigate life. Saqib lands the comedic sequences, especially with Tailang as his father, playing Sharma ji ka ladka who is a constant disappointment. Basu Prasad as the independent Zoya especially shines in the sequence where the couple finally has their big blowout.
Pranay Manchanda as the couple’s talent manager Siddhu and Jasmeet Singh Bhatia as the long-suffering house broker Timmy are standouts. The rest of the cast, in smaller roles, also do their part to add to the charm of the film.
While the story has some implausible points (how are they surviving if they keep getting thrown out of their pretty posh flats?), Comedy Couple overcomes these weaker parts by focusing on the relationship of Zoya and Deep. Samant, in his Hindi feature debut, prevails over the story’s portions when the couple in question are apart.
The film is the strongest when Deep and Zoya are together because we do want to see these crazy kids make it, after all.
Zee5 is now streaming Comedy Couple.