A cosy mystery set in and around a cottage in Khandala seems like a change of pace for audiences bludgeoned by crime shows. Since the tagline of Everybody Loves Sohrab Handa is a “A Moral Tale”, there’s a bit of scheming along with a crime.
Mostly, it’s writer-director Rajat Kapoor trying out another chamber piece after Kadakh (2019), set in a Mumbai apartment during a Diwali party. In the new film, a wedding anniversary celebration hosted by Raman (Neil Bhoopalam) and Jayanthi (Palomi Ghosh) turns sour.
The guests include Raman’s business partner, the eponymous Sohrab (Vinay Pathak), his wife Isha (Koel Purie Rinchet), ailing father (MK Raina), his nurse (Mallika Singh) and Sohrab’s troubled younger brother Arun (Chandrachoor Rai).
There’s also Jayanthi’s sister Suman (Sadiya Siddiqui), her put-upon husband Sandeep (Sharat Katariya) and their mostly silent son (Elgin D’Souza). The friends are Madhavan (Ranvir Shorey), his much younger girlfriend Nazia (Kankana Chakraborty), Kumar (Danish Hussain), the presenter of a sensation-mongering TV show with his partner Naina (Waluscha De Souza), and the psychologist Chandra (Rajat Kapoor). The cottage’s caretaker is Satya (Mahesh Sharma), who takes it upon himself to make cups of tea when the crisis hits.
For Kapoor, who usually makes independent and unpredictable films, Everybody Loves Sohrab Handa must feel like a palate cleanser between heavy courses. Not that it’s easy to mount a murder mystery, get a bunch of disparate characters together and work out their connections, problems and hidden agendas.
After a corpse is discovered, police investigators Afzal (Saurabh Shukla) and Amar (Saurabh Nayyar) get to work. There are flashbacks to the conversations and quarrels earlier that evening. There is a lot of busy chatter, a game of Dumb Charades and random monologues, but not much that indicates the extent of the friction that might have led to the murder.
Kapoor uses some of the conventions of the Christie-ish plot, but is not too concerned about details. One would expect Chandra, who has been making astute observations about the guests, to play Poirot, but he sticks to psychobabble. The inveterate scene-stealer Saurabh Shukla is uncharacteristically subdued.
Given his theatre experience, Kapoor deftly handles the entries and exits of characters within the confined space, which cinematographer Rafey Mehmood shoots keeping the intimacy of the set-up in mind. Knives Out it isn’t, but the real pleasure in Everybody Loves Sohrab Handa is in watching the ensemble – especially Ranvir Shorey and Vinay Pathak – having a good time. The banter is sharp and witty since the actors are comfortable around one another.
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