Shaadi Ke Side Effects Review

Well-begun is half done. Shaadi Ke Side Effects starts off promisingly too. The movie begins with the wife and husband meeting in a pub pretending as strangers, who then get drunk and make out in the hotel room. The idea behind the insane but interesting idea is to revive the love spark between them in their busy lives.
Sid (Farhan Akhtar) is a musician trying to settle down financally, and Trisha (Vidya Balan) already has a stable career.  Sid knows how to keep the chemistry between them lively until Trisha gets pregnant. Trisha starts getting preoccupied in taking care of the baby. Sid tries to be equally involved to the extent of putting a balloon of water inside his shirt to empathize with Trisha. However, he doesn’t have that ‘mother’s instinct’ and ends up making erroneous assumptions about the baby’s needs.  As time passes, he starts feeling that the attention towards him has also vanished.  The rest of the film is about what Sid does to make himself happy and its consequences.

‘Shaadi Ke .. ‘ lacks a head and tail when it comes to story. There will be not much progress in any manner. This movie is more like a translation of the marital-woes sms jokes into a bunch of videos joined together.  However to compensate such a big drawback, there are two factors which make us overlook the story-less script: Performances and conversations.  Farhan and Vidya are nothing less than fantastic as Sid and Trisha. They play the games of Dukhi Patni versus Frustrated Pati and Negative-thinking Patni versus Escapist Pati  so well, and that’s what is the USP of the movie.  Bakthar (Balan plus Akhtar) very well know that the plot is very thin and the only they can make the movie work is by being as convincing and natural as possible. The conversations between them are natural and stay far from any artificial melodrama.  Kudos to Saket Chaudhary for the well-written dialogues too. Ram Kapoor is entertaining as the ideal father. There are also a couple of cameos by Vir Das and Ila Arun. They were impeccable too.
The second hour of the movie is a drag with things almost coming to a halt and boredom stacking up.  The last 15 minutes is atrociously ridiculous and becomes a blackmark to the decently managed screenplay till then.  Pritam’s music is a letdown too. Cinematography is adequate.
All in all, definitely worth a watch for the performances of Vidya and Farhan  especially if your age falls somewhere between 25 and 40 (to foresee, to relate or to recall)!