Double over with laughter. 2 seconds later the seriousness catches up and leaves you thinking. That's Mixed Doubles for you. I first saw Rajat Kapoor in DCH, the cool, sauve uncle. The movie didn't do much for his acting credentials but he was sort of a calming presence in the movie. Any MD is directed by Rajat Kapoor.

The movie deals with a theme that could've been turned into one of Emraan Hashmi flicks. But thankfully Rajat has given the theme a wholly different treatment. The movie is about spouse-swapping. Yeah, that's right.

The movie is made on a canvas of continuous hilarous. The undercurrent of seriousness is thus delivered in a very effective way and settles lazily and comfortably into the mind. We keep hearing about how *such things* happen in various social circles. Numerous magazines write about infidelity, spouse-swapping and everything else to do with sexual orientations/what-not.
IMHO, this is the first time that the subject has been dealt within a practical frame of reference.

People call it sexual liberation. People call it westernization. People call it awakening. The truth is that it is a breakdown. The truth is that something has gone wrong somewhere. The movie portrays this practical side of emotions. It is a natural thing for someone to feel angry and jealous if their partners were as much as to merely flirt with someone, let alone be infidel. If someone does not feel any emotion, then the relationship is probably on the rocks already.

In my opinion, if either one feels a need or desire for experimentation, then it's best to give up on the relationship and split. It's an absolutely ridiculous idea that extra-marital affairs can keep the flame going. It would merely extinguish the current flame and ignite a completely different one.

There is one phrase in the movie that caught my mind, a phrase that I'm sure people would want to use upon me. 'Broad-minded'. Ranvir asks a newspaper vendor for the ads-magazine that has 'broad-minded ads'. If you think about it, that phrase is the whole problem. It's not being narrow-minded to want your partner to be fidel. It's not being narrow-minded to be in a relationship and want to make it work without succumbing to the so-called 'broad-mindedness'. That phrase 'broad-minded' has been twisted into improbably shapes by the awakened social consiousness. It's the ultimate weapon of choice with the *broad-minded* section of people.

The movie's ending (like most gen-x movies?) is abrupt. You leave the cinema-hall a bit confused and wondering about how it would actually have ended - the couple's relationship, that is.

The movie is absolute fun to watch. You can choose to ignore the under-current and you have the perfect recipe for a couple of hours of laughter. Choose to think about the subject and you have a serious subject delivered on the hilarous-express.

On the negative, there are some seriously jarring parts in the movie. The numero uno question amongst these would be, 'How in the world did malathi actually agree to the swap inspite of her being against it?' The movie's answer is that Sunil played a trick on her, but that's an unconvincing answer. If I wanted to, I could probably project the question into the deeper recesses of the human mind and come up with the magic rabbit - 'Their relationship was doomed anyway. And Malathi thought so too.' :-)

Take it or leave it, but if you have even started to think of having an affair on the side then the best thing to do would be split with your partner and go after the affair. And worse, if you are complacent about your partner's affairs, do yourself a favour and get out as soon as you can.

Ofcourse, everything's my narrow-minded opinion :-)