Review: TRIBHUVAN MISHRA – SEX COMEDY GONE BAD

The term sex comedy is used for a genre of comedy which mostly describes sexual situations and love affairs. Other names are erotic comedy, and sexual comedy. The name is mostly used for movies and theatre plays and less to literature according to Wikipedia. 

India, being the largest film producer in the world, with the strict censorship rules, is not known for the genre of the sex comedy. But since OTT channels do not have the strictures of censorship, NETFLIX could liberally break the rules of Indian convention and moral codes to release a nine-part OTT series called Tribhuvan Mishra, C.A. Topper which is not precisely a sex “comedy” but an entertainer that generously uses sex as the moonlighting occupation of a CA topper. But there is very little of intelligent comedy in the film. 

Tribhuvan Mishra is a qualified CA who works in a government undertaking. He is a thoroughly honest man and does not tolerate any monetary scruples though his boss, thoroughly corrupt in more ways than through bribes. He sticks out his thumb at corruption and carries on with his work. Tribhuvan Mishra (Manav Kaul) is happily married with two kids and has a very active and happy sex life. So when, the bank where his office’s salaries are deposited suddenly crashes overnight. Mishra is pushed against the wall. So, he decides to become a male sex worker or purush veshya to come out of his financial crisis. 

Puneet Mishra pulls all the stops to audiovisually jump into detailed elucidations of the metamorphosis in the rather shy, timid and unsmart young Tribhuvan to a hep, stylish, dapper young man who gells his hair, wears colourful shirts and becomes quite smart and brave. He also picks a ‘guru’ who is a gym instructor burdened under loans, to mentor him in his unusual profession. This touch of a purely platonic friendship between a male and a female colleague remains platonic right till the end which is a unique touch in a Hindi mainstream film.

This is just one track of the story. The other track follows the static life of the young housewife Bindi (Tilottama Shome) who is trapped in a sexless marriage to the much older Raja Bhaiyya (Shubhrojyoti Barat) known as the bhujiya king of Noida but is actually engaged in the very profitable business of scaring off people or bashing them up or killing them on order from clients who are asked to give his ‘firm’ a rating after each order is fulfilled. He has two very faithful henchmen Lappu (Amarjeet Singh) and Dhaincha (Ashok Pathak) ready to lay their lives for Raja Bhaiyya, even doubling up as the waiters and servants in his bhujiya shop. A new entrant Pinky, cannot speak without a paan stuffed in his mouth and these goondas and two cops are used mainly to add humour to the proceedings.

Bindi becomes Tribhuvan’s client and the two develop a close friendship which raises Raja Bhaiyya’s pleasure at the change in his wife but later, turns to suspicion about what brought about this change. There are two policemen also, introduced to induce humour in the scenario which fails when it becomes a bit too overdone. Add to this, Tribhuvan’s brother-in-law Shambhu (Sumit Gulati) and his ghunghat-wearing wife (Shweta Basu Prasad) who turns into a Jhansi Ki Rani toting a gun when the situation so demands. Tribhuvan’s wife Ashoklata (Naina Sareen) an excellent baker, has no suspicions about the sudden rise of income though the salary has been blocked and is very happy with her virile and loving husband. But we are never shown how she runs her bakery in a posh shopping mall. Why? The climax reveals the rather unexpected twist in the story which takes us all by surprise.

The problem with this film is that while trying to turn it into an unabashed sex comedy, though the ‘comedy’ part has nothing to do with the sex part is that the director and the script have put too many eggs in one basket and to do this, they have introduced too many characters that go out of control of after a point of time. The parts where Tribhuvan is forced to kill one of Raja Bhaiyya’s henchmen the flashback showing why Dhencha cannot count beyond 17, Tribhuvan smuggling himself to do the accounts for the husbands of two of his clients, are just too much to swallow and are totally uncalled for.

Manav Kaul as the oversexed and virile Tribhuvan Mishra CA Topper is excellent in a character many of our top heroes would not have touched with a ten-foot-long pole. The little-known Naina Sareen as Tribhuvan’s wife is charming, naïve and natural and shrugs off the suspicions of her interfering and Nosy Parker of a mother who decides to become a permanent guest in the Mishra home much to the chagrin of Tribhuvan. It is the acting by the actors that saves the film from meandering and then collapsing into nothing. Take for example the sterling performance of Tilttoma Shome showing her change from a very unhappy wife to a warm, lovely and charming woman who falls in love with Tribhuvan who does not, repeat does not love her back turning her into an angry, dejected lover who is bent on revenge. But if prizes were to be distributed, the top award would obviously be bestowed on Shubhrajoti Barat as Raja Bhaiyya and Yamini Dass as the insufferable Nosy Parket mother-in-law of Tribhuvan.

The music keeps tuned to the changing moods of the film but the terrible bouts of violence does not hold in a film that is talking about the total ignorance of society to the reality of female sexual desire. Tribhuvan’s prosperous rise in affluence is proof through the large number of female clients he services for around Rs.15000/hour. The sound design is imaginative and innovative keeping with the switches in the mood swings in the story.

A very good touch is the gym trainer who is Tribhuvan’s mentor but is a terrible coward in real life. The film opens with a gruesomely picturised scene of violence edited in quick jerks and cinematographed in cuts and close-ups of different parts of the body, a scene repeated later in the film. The long climax filled with violence in a public place brings the film down entirely with the last shot of Tribhuvan riding away alone on the back of a white horse, shot from behind while his wife drives away with the kids in the opposite direction, tries to rescue the film but really cannot.

The trade name that Tribhuvan adopts is the funniest feature of the film. He announces his arrival to a client at the seedy joint infamous for such one-night stands, with his trade name “CA Topper.” 

*****