IT IS ONLY AUGUST and Mudassar Aziz’s Khel Khel Mein is Akshay Kumar’s third film this year. On paper, it is not an oddity given the actor is known for headlining multiple projects simultaneously. But with the string of commercial failures behind him (his last hit was Rohit Shetty’s Sooryavanshi in 2021), every release feels like a renewed gesture from Kumar to stand back up and want to be liked. It is almost like a duel, a self-defeating exercise, where the audience keeps disapproving of his work and to combat that, he dunks us with more non-committal, tiresome and provoking work. In Khel Khel Mein, a superfluous comedy that touches upon everything from queerness to workplace harassment without dipping a toe, the actor has finally stopped trying and the film is better for it. 

Aziz’s new outing is an adaptation of Paolo Genovese’s Perfect Strangers, the supremely successful 2016 Italian film that has spawned several remakes (28 to be precise) in several countries. The appeal is evident. Sample the premise: seven close friends gather together and as one thing leads to another, they start a game where each can be privy to the other’s phone. No matter how you see it, the setting baits the inherent voyeur in us and needles the universal theory that despite being in a relationship, one partner might never know what the other is up to. Khel Khel Mein waters down this urgency but hints at earnest subplots. There is a couple stuck in a loveless marriage unable to have children (Taapsee Pannu and Ammy Virk – both crackling); there is a marriage of unequals where the woman is more well-off than the man (Aditya Seal and Pragya Jaiswal); there is a middle-aged man married to an author but unable to get over his former late wife (Akshay Kumar and Vaani Kapoor), and there is a brooding guy (Fardeen Khan) with a girlfriend no one has seen. All have gathered on the occasion of someone else's marriage when the fun and game begins. 

It is not delusional to expect Hindi filmmakers to ruin a perfectly working plot. Take any remake in the last couple of years (many acted by Kumar himself) and it’s obvious how laziness and cultural misappropriation have caused the undoing. There is also the looming fear of comedies in Hindi cinema being (largely) rooted in misogyny where women tend to be the punchlines and the punching bag (many acted by Kumar himself). On his part, Aziz has designed his work with the slapstick recall of the 2000s while drawing the line precisely where it starts replicating their flaws. It is a delicate dance and Khel Khel Mein straddles with triumph. For instance, it is bent on giving men an easier way out but also offsets it with women having the last word, it suggests that women might be heedless overthinkers but curbs the finality of this by presenting men who have been cheating in marriage, it depicts cheating in marriage but neutralises it by suggesting it was coercion or devoid of love. Khel Khel Mein swings so much that every time you feel it will take a misstep or make a commentary, it commits to neither and settles for laughs. 

I’ll say it: it is not a bad thing, primarily because the timing is consistently effective. Sure, there is a queer guy who has “Free Love” tattooed on his fingers, sure there is a rebellious 18-year-old who taunts her step-mother like we are back in the Stone Age (the picture of her dead mother in the room is the dead-est I have ever seen), sure there is a female character who pops a pill looking at the mirror and sultrily says, “Depression, check”, sure scoring all moments of revelation to the song 'Parde Mein Rehne Do' is overkill and sure there are more false alarms than bells. But Khel Khel Mein wants to be that film. It wants to take a stroll on the surface without scratching it, it wants to share a good laugh without overstaying its welcome (the runtime is a well-earned 130 minutes). A human equivalent of it would be an apolitical person who has “laughter is the best medicine” and “Black Lives Matter” posters in their room. 

Aziz, who previously directed the uninspired Pati Patni Aur Woh in 2019, displays a genuine knack for mining humour in the ordinary. Like a neglected housewife running a vlog and her bitter mother-in-law cribbing that she got Gurdas Maan at home, or a gender-neutral name like Harpreet saved as “Harpreet male” in phone contacts, or a Sikh man getting embroiled in a misunderstanding about his sexual orientation and when confronted by his friend (he deserved to know, he accuses), the retort comes flying from the other end, “So what, are you Brad Pitt?” Most of these moments work and also the fact that the filmmaker never loses sight of what he wants to achieve, that is building drama without indulging in it. 

But what he does best is knowing the strengths of his leading actor and leaning on it. This is the funniest Akshay Kumar has been in years and so much of the film unfolds as a masterclass by him on comedy. He is Rishabh, a plastic surgeon married to a novelist wife (meta) who lies through his teeth to get out of sticky situations. It is a perfectly shady character that Kumar has done multiple reiterations of in the past but there is something to be said about how watchable he is. In his introduction scene, he cuts the line at the Mumbai airport and when called out, flashes his British passport. The man on the other side immediately bows and says, “Good morning” and Kumar does the same without breaking a sweat. It is a hilarious scene just for the way he does what he does. There is also a large stretch when the game is underway and the actor is mostly restricted to reaction shots. He is hilarious as he effortlessly melds stock reactions with genuine shock. As a friend sitting next to me stated, “it is infuriating how good he can be.”

It is infuriating. The commercial fate of Khel Khel Mein is anybody's guess, but what it does for certain is remind us of the comedic genius of Akshay Kumar. In the last few years, he has veered towards propaganda films and partaken in one misfire after another. He looks excessive and dishonest in those films. The fall has been tragic but the bigger tragedy here is losing out on an actor with one of the better comic timings in Hindi cinema. Maybe all don’t have to save the country, some are just better at playing games. 

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