The New Yorker Recommends: a Merciless Comedy About Crazy Rich Indians

Posted by Business leader from Newyorker

October 18, 2018

The Mehras, the family at the core of the Zoya Akhtar film “Dil Dhadakne Do,” are “self-made” one-per-centers for whom the maintenance of moneyed trappings has become a full-time job. Anil Kapoor plays Kamal Mehra, the family patriarch with a gloriously thick head of hair and an even thicker sense of entitlement. Mrs. Neelam Mehra, Kamal’s wife, binge-eats her frustration, ignores her daughter, and lovingly coos, “Kitna modest hai mera baby?” (“How modest is my baby?”), to Kabir, her twenty-five-year-old son. Kabir is coddled by his mother, yelled at by his dour father, and is the designated savior of the family’s dwindling fortunes, despite exhibiting neither interest nor ability in keeping a company afloat. (Still, like any good Rich Movie Son, he has an affinity for planes; he gets teary at the prospect of the company jet being sold.) Meanwhile, his older sister Ayesha (Priyanka Chopra), the only Mehra child with a head for business, has been married off and... learn more