‘Dilwali Diwali’ review: For once, a film is too short to release its ambitions

Dilwali Diwali rests on a solid idea. A striving engineer who lives in Norway buys an apartment in a posh complex for his family in Mumbai, but they prefer the house in which they grew up. They sneak back to their home whenever they can and hotfoot it to the new dwelling when the son appears on a video call.

The son, Ansh (Mihir Ahuja), declares that he will be visiting for Diwali, throwing his father Sudhir (Manoj Pahwa) and mother Sukhmani (Neelu Kohli) into a tizzy. Ansh arrives to find parents who are behaving strangely and his sister, Mahi (Aurra Bhatnagar) wrapped up in her own world.

Ritesh Menon’s Dilwali Diwali, which is out on Netflix, reveals its shortcomings through its duration. For once, the complaint is that a film is too short – it runs for a mere 61 minutes .

The truncated length doesn’t do justice to the themes of Ritu Mago’s screenplay: gentrification forced down the throats of people who prefer bustling and noisy neighbourhoods; an aspiration for higher living standards that is not shared by every family member; insecurity over mingling with a superior economic class.

Whatever there is in Dilwali Diwali remains at the level of promise. The Hindi film always feels like the initial draft of...

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