Stars: three and half
Good Newwz is a light hearted look at the mounting desperation of married couples to reproduce within a stipulated time period after the wedding, mostly because of the pressure from the society to toe the line.
Deepu (Kareena Kapoor) and Varun Batra (Akshay Kumar) are an urban couple married for seven plus years. Deepu, who prolonged the pregnancy owing to her career, is now keen on starting the family even if to shut the relatives up from asking her uncomfortable questions. They visit a fertility clinic where they cross paths with a loud punjabi couple, Honey Batra (Diljit Dosanjh) and his pretty wife Monika (Kiara Advani). Weird circumstances force the two couples to be part of each other’s lives.
Director Raj Mehta, who’s also written the story along with Jyoti Kapoor and Rishabh Sharma, makes a confident debut with this one. He manages to keep the goings on light and Rishabh Sharma’s largely fresh and funny dialogues raise quite a few chuckles. Mehta also has the advantage of four competent actors playing his protagonists. It is a pleasure to watch Kareena Kapoor back on screen. Apart from looking gorgeous, Kareena who has the strongest character in the film, is fabulous. Even though the setting is largely comic and light hearted, Kareena manages to bring in the emotional turmoil that her character is going through, quite well. Akshay Kumar clearly seems to have enjoyed doing this role and his joy gets translated on screen. Diljit Dossanj is a natural and fits the character pretty well. Kiara Advani gives good support. Together the four competent actors make for a good team.
While some portions did seem to drag a bit, the movie mostly keeps you engrossed and involved, makes you laugh quite often and generally keeps you entertained. Mehta could have looked into lapses in detailing, especially after one child enters the scene. Also, the film’s take on adoption is ambiguous. While Mehta had a perfect chance to promote a good cause like adoption, he bungles on that front with some namby pamby logic of ‘apna khoon apna hota hai.’
Overall, an entertaining film.
