Director: Homi Adajania
Writers: Gazal Dhaliwal, Suprotim Sengupta
Cast: Pankaj Tripathi, Sara Ali Khan, Vijay Varma, Karisma Kapoor, Dimple Kapadia, Tisca Chopra, Sanjay Kapoor, Suhail Nayyar, Deven Bhojani, Ashim Gulati
Duration: 143 mins
Streaming on: Netflix
Based on author Anuja Chauhan’s 2021 book Club You To Death, Murder Mubarak marks director Homi Adajania’s (relative) return to form after a decade. Adapted by Gazal Dhaliwal and Suprotim Sengupta, it seems to be right down Adajania’s graffiti-blasted ally: Part-White Lotus and part-Knives Out, the film is a snide social satire masquerading as a high-society whodunit. At 143 minutes, it’s a bit long and meandering, but the indulgent world-building is part of the payoff. A hunky zumba trainer, Leo Mathews (Ashim Gulati), is found dead – choked by barbells during his morning workout – at the exclusive Royal Delhi Club. CCTV footage suggests it was no accident. Assistant commissioner of police (ACP) Bhavani Singh (Pankaj Tripathi) reaches the scene, immediately tickled by the club’s liberal elitism. One by one, he investigates their closet skeletons, blind spots and hypocrisies. It’s all muddled and loose, but the plot is never too far from a few class-rage truths.
Meet the Members
The character-cum-suspects are all “sample pieces”: Miserly aristocrat Rannvijay Singh (Sanjay Kapoor), gossipy Lutyens’ homemaker Roshni Batra (Tisca Chopra), her bratty drug-addicted son Yash (Suhail Nayyar), enigmatic middle-aged superstar Shehnaz Noorani (Karisma Kapoor), and sex-crazed socialite Cookie Katoch (Dimple Kapadia). There’s also ‘commie’ lawyer Akash Dogra (Vijay Varma), who is taunted by his Punjabi parents for “turning leftist” after dating a Bengali girl. And most conspicuous is Bambi Todi (Sara Ali Khan), an entitled kleptomaniac-widow who gets invested in this case as if it were the latest Netflix true-crime series.
The club elections are coming, and tensions run high. As per template, the victim wasn’t exactly a saint. Each of the wealthy nutters had a reason to eliminate lusty Leo, a hustler who knew their secrets and blackmailed them into donating to his orphanage. On the other side of the social ladder lies the club staff: A dementia-addled caretaker (Brijendra Kala), a troubled hairdresser (Tara Alisha Berry), a traumatized waitress (Amaara Sangam), and trainers from Karnataka and Arunachal Pradesh called ‘twins’ by their casually racist clients. There’s also a lethargic cat called Prince Harry, who carries on the club tradition of animals being named (and perhaps fated) after members of the British royal family. If the film had waited more, a missing fish named Princess Middleton might’ve made a fetching cameo.