Sui Dhaaga movie review: The Anushka and Varun starrer is nice, safe and staid

Small-town town couple wins big, pushing aside wily, wicked, unscrupulous townies and greedy rivals: the film’s single-point agenda is drenched in both sweetness and earnestness. The only trouble with the film is its total predictability: you know what’s coming miles before the characters do.

That Mauji (Dhawan) and Mamta (Sharma) will become partners in their own enterprise which involves sewing machines and design wizardry and indomitable will, is something we know right when the film opens.

The constantly complaining elderly father (Yadav) retiring from a no-account job, the always delivering homilies homely mother, the elder brother with a shrewish wife, will first put up resistance to the younger son and daughter-in-law’s plan to better their collective future, and after several easy conflicts, will become cheerleaders for Team Sui Dhaaga. This we also know.

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What I was expecting was a little more surprise, and yes, a little more fun, given Sharat Katariya’s utterly captivating previous outing Dum Laga Ke Haisha, which had so many unexpected touches that were pure pleasure. Could it be that there was more leeway possible with the practically new leads of Dum, and the big stars in Sui Dhaaga made it a more careful film? Or was it because the idea flowed from a ‘sarkari , sanskari’ programme?

It’s not as if Dhawan hasn’t tried his best to become Mauji. With each appearance, his level of commitment is clearly on the upside, and he is a very likeable actor, striving to win us over, if he does miss a couple of beats here and there. Sharma is excellent, from the arranging of the ‘pallu’ on the head just so, to some of her fulsome exchanges with Dhawan: the kindling of feeling between the two – something people who live in cramped quarters in joint families will immediately cotton on to – is one of the highlights of the film. But there’s altogether too much of the let’s-berate-the-feckless-and-foolish-Mauji-and-Mamta-ki-jodi among the family: that’s the flat, repetitive part of the film.

As has become almost the norm these days, the solid supporting cast deserves a film of their own. Yadav, the veteran, is of course the stand-out. So are the actors who play the dumpy mother, and the USA-returned designer who steals from ‘desi’ talent in the art of self-promotion. And a bunch of other parts.

Sui Dhaaga is well made. It’s nice and safe and staid. There are several moments that warm the heart, and you cheer when sui-dhaaga win over needle-and-thread. But you always knew they were going to, didn’t you?