Jab Khuli Kitaab review: A warm, wobbly film that laughs at life’s cruel jokes!

With an old-fashioned heart, Saurabh Shukla's sweet imperfect film dissects the complicated matters of the heart reminding us that life is often a comedy we insist on treating like a tragedy!

With everything around us feeling constantly overwhelming, sometimes all it takes is a shift in perspective. As life might be a cruel joke, but it is still a joke that we can learn to laugh at rather than only cry about. That is precisely the sentiment Saurabh Shukla’s Jab Khuli Kitaab attempts to explore. Following the journey of two seventy-year-olds who decide they want to live separately while still together, the film gently reminds us that life is ultimately made of moments and memories, fleeting things that time eventually takes away.

The story begins with an elderly couple, Gopal Nautiyal (Pankaj Kapur) and Anusuaya Nautiyal (Dimple Kapadia), settled into a carefully constructed morning routine. The difference, however, lies in the fact that Gopal is caring for his bedridden wife Anusuaya, who has been in a coma for the past two years. He bathes her, dresses her, changes her clothes, and talks to her constantly, as if reading the newspaper aloud, updating her about their lives, their memories, and the world outside. She cannot respond, but she listens. Until one day she wakes up. And the first thing she tells her devoted husband is that she cheated on him nearly fifty years ago with a man she once loved.

Suddenly, the coma becomes a vessel of guilt that finally spills into confession. What follows is the unravelling of a marriage where love was rarely spoken and a life shared daily yet quietly carrying a secret. Time itself becomes the villain, turning a long-buried truth into a third presence inside a relationship that had otherwise survived five decades.

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Within the first few minutes, Jab Khuli Kitaabthrows a startling curveball that takes time to process. Shukla, who writes and directs the film, opens with a shock that almost resembles the dramatic hooks of today’s reels. After all, how often do you hear of someone waking up from a two-year coma only to confess to infidelity from fifty years ago to the husband who devotedly cared for them? Yet that absurdity is precisely where the film finds its humour. Beneath the premise lies a story grappling with serious ideas of infidelity, the fragile value of a long marriage, bruised male ego, and the quiet tragedy of a woman who once fell in love with someone else while already married.

And yet, the film approaches these heavy themes with a surprising sense of playfulness. The premise itself is inherently comic as two seventy-year-olds, both approaching the twilight of life, suddenly deciding they want a divorce. But like every joke that hides a sliver of truth, this one does too as there is no age limit for separation. This allows Shukla to explore the strange dichotomies of life, where irony often hides inside absurdity. If life is ultimately made of countless moments, should one moment destroy everything? But if that one moment exposes fifty years of life as a potential lie, how does one move past it? The film finds its humour in these contradictions, especially in sequences like a bewildered lawyer explaining that “extramarital affairs” and “illicit relationships" are the same or a courtroom scene where a wife agrees to a divorce she doesn’t want, simply to honour her husband’s wishes. 

There is an old-fashioned warmth to the film, paired with a sketch-like, almost cartoonish tone. Not in a caricatured way that trivialises its characters, but in a gentle tomfoolery that encourages chuckles while nudging the audience toward reflection. Even serious tensions such as a mother-in-law’s disdain for her Parsi daughter-in-law or a man quietly reassessing his fifty-year marriage are underscored by playful music, as if reminding us that life itself behaves like a stand-up routine, throwing punches in the most unexpected places. However, much like a stand-up set where some jokes land and others falter, the film too struggles with balance at times. Occasionally, its weighty themes are treated a little too lightly, or resolved a bit too conveniently. Matters of the heart might indeed be simply complicated, but they sometimes demand more emotional depth than the film is willing to linger on.

Fortunately, the performances incluidng the extended cast anchor the narrative Pankaj Kapur and Dimple Kapadia, with their decades of experience and lived-in screen presence that reflects in a pause in conversations or the silent weight carried in their wrinkles bring remarkable tenderness to Gopal and Anusuaya. And Aparshakti Khurrana plays the wise old joker with infectious energy bringing in music, dance, laughter, and an almost overenthusiastic optimism into the narrative. In the end, Jab Khuli Kitaab is a charming, slightly uneven film that looks at love, guilt, and companionship through an unexpectedly comic lens. It may stumble occasionally, but its heart remains firmly in the right place reminding us that life, in all its contradictions, might sometimes be less of a tragedy and more of a strange, bittersweet joke!

Jab Khuli Kitaab is currently streaming on Zee5!

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