4 min readMay 15, 2026 02:14 PM IST
Pati Patni Aur Woh Do movie review: The first film with the title Pati Patni Aur Woh came out in 1978. Many marriages are shorter, and if not, the Woh is the least of their problems.
But clearly, till box office does them part, the idea of a film based on a husband, a wife and the other woman remains irresistible. In this case, it is not just one Woh but two, and they are not the only perfectly sensible women seemingly losing their heads around Prajapati (Ayushmaan Khurrana), Regional Forest Officer dubbed “leopard Casanova”.
He catches the big cat in one swoop of the net, staring right into its VFX face. Thankfully, a goat and a wolf are the only other animals smarted in the making of this film.
The ones who suffer the most, as suggested earlier, are the women: Aparna (Wamiqa Gabbi), Prajapati’s wife and one-woman newspaper “editor-in-chief”; Nilofer Khan (Rakul Preet Singh), Prajapati’s colleague, Chanchal (Sara Ali Khan); Prajapati’s friend, Chanchal’s buaji (Ayesha Raza Mishra); and Aparna’s mother (Deepika Amin), a lawyer of note.
The premise is that into Aparna and Prajapati’s happily married life in Prayagraj, including a wedding and song 5 minutes into the film, lands Chanchal. The latter is romantically involved with Sudhansu, the son of a local Benaras MLA (Tigmanshu Dhulia), and the politician will have none of it as he wants Sudhanshu to follow him into politics, and her caste doesn’t fit into that.
Chanchal needs to just elude the MLA’s two goons (including Durgesh Kumar), till she and Sudhanshu can elope abroad. So she turns to Prajapati, and the plan they think up is to convince the MLA that Chanchal’s lover is actually him.
Needless to say, there are many knots in this tie, and as the game of deception goes round and round in larger and larger concentric circles, it sucks in ever more people. One of them being an inspector (Vijay Raaz), the staple for entire Benaras it appears.
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Confusions mount, as do misunderstandings. Director Mudassar Aziz, who also directed the 2019 Pati Patni Aur Woh with as much or as little effort and nuance, has things to say. And some of them he tells well, like the dialect of Eastern UP sprinkled liberally with “be, kahe, guru, miyan, kampat”. It’s a change and sounds genuine, if not refreshing not any more because the number of films based in this region now.
Aziz also gently nudges, like in the 2019 film, towards how this is a society where Hindus and Muslims seamlessly blend together still, where a Pandey hangs together with a Khan and can ponder non-vegetarianism without a moral attack, and where an Abdul Mishra drops from the tongue effortlessly — not as fraught a relationship as they will have you believe.
Pati Patni Aur Woh Do movie trailer:
Towards a brief while in the end, the comedy of errors actually works as a comedy of errors, as the film’s bevy of good actors shine through.
But why oh why does all of it have to be delivered in a near constant high-pitch? Why do the songs need to put all three women around Prajapati in different states of ridiculous undress? And why clothe it all in a modernity that can conceive women in jobs, women in open relationships, women in literally the driver’s seat, but not women who actually get a choice that doesn’t revolve around a man?
Time to have the Woh’s story.
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Pati Patni Aur Woh Do movie cast: Ayushmann Khurrana, Wamiqa Gabbi, Sara Ali Khan, Rakul Preet Singh, Ayesha Raza Mishra, Deepika Amin, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Vijay Raaz
Pati Patni Aur Woh Do movie director: Mudassar Aziz
Pati Patni Aur Woh Do movie rating: 1.5 stars
