Badhaai Ho

Nakul is twenty five, works in Delhi and has a girlfriend. One day he learns his mother is pregnant. His parents are in their fifties; there is a grandmother in the house, a neighbourhood, a workplace, and everyone treats it as a scandal. So does he. Amit Sharma directs. Ayushmann Khurrana plays Nakul, Neena Gupta plays his mother Priyamvada, Gajraj Rao his father Jeetender, and Surekha Sikri the grandmother. The target is the social shame attached to sex in middle age. In India the sexuality of parents almost never appears in narrative; this film puts it squarely at the centre and shows the shame originating with the children and the neighbours. Neena Gupta's character is the centre of gravity. She had spent a long time at the edge of mainstream Indian cinema, and this film reopened her career. Surekha Sikri won a National Film Award as the grandmother. It was made cheaply and became one of the most profitable Indian films of 2018, and is regularly cited as a film that did business on its subject rather than on a star cast. Who it is for: viewers who like Indian family comedy and popular cinema that takes on social taboo. Who it is not for: the reconciliation at the end comes too easily, and the film displays the reaction more than it interrogates it.