Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar: Luv Ranjan’s Failed Portrayal Of A Modern Woman

Some spoilers ahead:

I watched Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar this weekend because one thing about me, I might not look like a person who loves romantic comedies, but it’s my favourite genre. I am a sucker for hopeless romance and rom-coms with happy endings. They’re like mac n cheese or rajma chawal for me. My comfort food. The trailer of TJMM seemed to be promising and hilarious, plus Anubhav Singh Bassi, so I decided to go watch it.

If I had to describe Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar in brief, it would be – Luv Ranjan tried to work on the feedback of making regressive and misogynistic films and decided to give the female lead a chance for the first time. He TRIED to give her the agency, but again how much can you expect from a woman written by Luv Ranjan starring in his ‘Male-verse‘?

Ranbir Kapoor as Mickey! Ah, where do I even start? Mickey is a guy with generational wealth and a super “chill family” but is still a ‘Jodi breaker’ (breakup consultant) in Luv Ranjan’s male verse. This made me think about Bassi’s famous line from his standup “Is baat ki koi sense hai? Hume bahut lag rahi thi us time”

Mickey drives a Merc, is a man baby who doesn’t do ‘relationships’ but decides to get extremely sleazy and corny over a girl he saw on a vacation and knew nothing about. (Yeah, they still make movies like this.) Mickey shows up at the girl; he was smitten by, Tinni’s room and literally gaslights her into a ‘relationship’ with a guy she knows nothing about. (The gaslighting goes a long way till the very end.) He has a whole 8 min monologue where he’s persuading her. So yeah, he gets the girl by saying things like, “Itna hot 6pack wala sundar ladka kahan milega” *Sigh*

Shraddha Kapoor’s Tinni is objectified in every goddamn shot. Her presence is only for the male gaze. The entire movie was either close-up shots of her waist or her legs. It just made me super uncomfortable. So, Tinni is a gorgeous woman who seems to be a go-getter and has her life sorted. She is a career-oriented, boss woman at first. But her character slips away and is limited to her being gaslighted and giving up everything she wanted for a guy, dropping her career and everything she stood for by the end of the film. What a shame because Tinni had the potential. Instead, she was limited to a girlfriend, then a wife and was magically transformed into a ‘bahu‘. Why? Because she’s a woman in Luv Ranjan’s ‘male-verse’.

Anubhav Singh Bassi was also one of the biggest reasons I watched the movie. He plays Dabbas, Ranbir’s sidekick. Dabbas was the worst character in the entire film. What a waste. He was Ranbir’s fellow ‘Jodi breaker’ business partner who apparently gets two lakhs to get a breakup done. Lol. Let’s keep that aside, so he marries a woman he dislikes and gets her pregnant too. The entire movie, Dabbas cribs about how he’s stuck in a marriage he didn’t want, and the movie ends with him having a baby shower for his wife, whom he doesn’t like which again makes me go, “Koi sense hai is baat ki?”

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TJMM has a lot of monologues and unnecessary self-references which honestly, nobody cares about. The OG characters from Luv Ranjan’s male-verse also make a god-awful cameo. I can go on and on talking about the film but hostly, not worth it.

Luv Ranjan’s film TJMM is super problematic. Apart from the reeking misogyny and blatant sexism, it’s boring too. The way they still make films that are so behind in time baffles me because WHY? TJMM had potential. It could’ve been a nice feel-good rom-com but failed miserably because the characters were “all show no substance” and had too many loose ends to be overlooked and many flaws that just couldn’t be concealed. For me TJMM was a 1/5, won’t recommend.

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