Director Sharan Sharma’s debut film Gunjan Saxena drew its story from real life. His sophomore outing Mr & Mrs Mahi is based on a thought. Besides Janhvi Kapoor as the common factor, both films rest on more or less the same notion — the rise of the underdog by wresting a second (or third) chance from a world unwilling to give any.

Mr & Mrs Mahi is simplistic, often to the point of being a fairy tale that doesn’t exist, but is the kind of feel-good cinema we all need to take refuge in more often than not.

The Mr here is Rajkummar Rao’s Mahendra, known as Mahi in short. The Mrs to Mr Mahi is Mahima, played by Janhvi Kapoor, who is also referred to as Mahi by friends and family. The trajectory of their lives may seem different on the surface — Mahima has been a topper all through her student life and is now a doctor. Mahendra, an aspiring cricketer whose chances of making it beyond the club level was cut short by under-performance, now whiles away his time at his family’s sports goods shop. Not only does Mahendra have to put up with a father (Kumud Mishra) who sees him as a failure, he also has to contend with a brother (played by Arijit Taneja) whose dizzying rise to fame comes from starring in saas-bahu soaps.

What ties Mahendra and Mahima — whose arranged marriage takes place pretty early on in the film — is their common fanaticism for cricket and the fact that their unfulfilled dreams arise from not being able to carry on playing the game. Mahima played gully cricket as a child but parental pressure forced her to forgo the willow for the stethoscope. However, she still follows cricket with passion, knowing exactly how Ishant Sharma needs to bowl in order to send Aaron Finch back to the pavilion.

Once they get married, Mr Mahi not only finds a loving partner and a strong support in Mrs Mahi, he also discovers his purpose in life — he takes on the task of training her to be a cricketer, aiming to get his wife selected into the state team in six months. What follows are moments of ecstasy, romance, drama, misunderstanding, hubris and, of course, resolution.

In Gunjan Saxena, Janhvi played the eponymous protagonist who beats all odds to not only become an Air Force pilot but also take the fight right into the enemy camp during the Kargil War. In that film, Gunjan had her father, played by the always dependable Pankaj Tripathi, to support her when the world didn’t. In Mr & Mrs Mahi, Mahima has not only a support but a strong mentor in Mahendra who takes it upon himself to coach her. However, as she catapults to overnight success, there is an Abhimaan-cum-Amadeus interlude that threatens to derail their ‘partnership’.

Mr & Mrs Mahi aims to be a feel-good, inspirational story even if that means it sometimes loses touch with what the real picture is. The complexities in a marriage — especially if a partner feels shortchanged by the other — aren’t solved as easily as they are in the film. Relationships are tough, marriage even more so, but the resolution to every conflict in this film — written jointly by Sharan Sharma and Nikhil Mehrotra — seems to be just an enlightening conversation or a pep talk away. While that may work in the world of Mr & Mrs Mahi, things are very different in the real world.

What, however, gives this film its dose of reality is a rooted, warts and all, performance from Rajkummar. Right from his first film, Love, Sex Aur Dhokha, Raj has never been afraid to go against the grain and play men who are more black than grey — we all despised his character in Queen — and even here, his Mahi is an insecure underachiever who doesn’t shy away from manipulation and mind games in order to get around. But even when he is being selfish, Raj ensures that Mahi always remains vulnerable, making his moment of redemption all the more heartfelt. Raj also has a funny bone waiting to be tapped — remember that laugh-out-loud turn in Bareilly Ki Barfi — and in this film, he gets to play on that a bit. Watch him in that scene where he attempts to create a reel to ‘market’ himself... unadulterated guffaws guaranteed!

The film does well in mining the initial interactions between the two Mahis for some awkward humour, most of which is given life by Janhvi. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and after a few missteps in the beginning, Sridevi’s daughter is slowly but surely coming into her own as an actress. In Mr & Mrs Mahi, Janhvi’s dialogue delivery is as confident as her stance with the bat.

Mr & Mrs Mahi may not be as flawless as the sixes that Mahima lobs out of the ground but in the end, it is a film that leaves you warm and fuzzy. Which is more than we can expect in today’s times.