Mood Kharaab Review: The famous comedian Biswa Kalyan Rath’s standup special Mood Kharaab is all about his childhood and other experiences that are pretty relatable. Directed by Kanan Gill, the Amazon Prime comedy show is bilingual and runs for an hour. The show has English subtitles as well.
Mood Kharaab is produced by Rachita Arya, Rishabh Nahar, Sachit Ramesh, and Vikram Singh. The show’s music is scored by Nucleya, well-known for his hit song Let’s Nacho. The other crew members are Eric Pereira, Alastair Clayton, Delphi Mangan, Vipin Sanjay Pawar, Matthew Talks, Neha Gurjar, Sudhakar Jhadhav, Siddhant Jhamb, Sehar Kaur, Simran Khurana, Stuart Laws, Nick Long, Santosh Raut, Mahafrin Sidhwa and several others.
-Mood Kharaab Review Does Not Contain Any Spoilers-
The show starts with a mini-skit starring Biswa on the streets of London, questioning his existence. It does set the theme for the forthcoming stand-up, but honestly, in the end, it feels quite pointless. Yes. After wrapping the whole stand-up show, I felt that whatever happened at the skit where Biswa fed imaginary pigeons while pondering about his crisis, the connection looked terrible and led nowhere.
Now let’s dig into what happens in the show. Biswa starts his comedy special by pointing out how the English do their work properly when it comes to the process of immigration while they’re the same ones who barge inside India and shoo away the citizens who question when they trespass. This joke alludes to the colonisation days and Biswa’s annoyance at these White pals. Hence, he, who is fluent in 3 languages, decides to abuse the immigration officer verbally (alright, this joke was a good start).
Right after this, he instantly bridges back to his childhood, and the jump to his memories feels rushed. Why are we talking about Biswa’s school days when students used to greet teachers? We don’t know how from London immigration, we moved back there but we did. Throughout his jokes regarding school days, the ecstasy of holding pee for 8 hours, and greeting PT teacher out of school hours, one can expect continuous chuckles because, obviously, nostalgic jokes won’t fail at that.
However, after these jokes, the next few minutes, precisely half of the show is loaded with “relatable” childhood memories only. This makes the show completely dependent on similar life moments that definitely will make people reminisce and laugh. Are they even jokes any more or just a happy trip down memory lane? The entire show felt like the audience, and even I, laughed only because of thinking back on what happened when I was a kid.
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Okay, he does move on ahead to the future, where he mentions the internet hearing everything and ads popping up on the phone, forcing one to buy products. Yes, again, relatable. So Biswa’s out there explaining how he struggles to return/buy a package from third-party sites and all those moments. Pretty relatable, and that’s it.
Towards the end, Biswa comes to the screen with a TV screen where he presents jokes while swapping the PPT-like screen. That’s when I personally felt like the crowd got a tad bit hyped, thankfully.
Biswa’s Crew Have to Prep it Better Next Time
The stage isn’t well-decorated or has any fancy things—it is a small stage, and Biswa in black is the only focus (he’s well-known for his black torso, though). It is disappointing to see a star comedian on a platform that looks absolutely dead. Let’s be honest, even rookies get to have some bright things going on in the background, yet the set where Biswa performed looks absolutely dead.
Not that we need a grand theatre stage with spotlights all around, but at least his name could have been placed on the screen with some lights. Or how about some puns stuck on it? Note that the show is airing on Amazon Prime, and the crew should have put some effort into making the place look appealing so that viewers watching it on-screen would feel lively. Nevertheless, the efforts put into making the episode look like a special is 0.
Mood Kharaab Review: Final Thoughts
Biswa tried, at least; that’s all I can say. Not that his jokes are awful or didn’t make me laugh, they did. But the stand-up feels like a whole bunch of similar life experiences aligned in a way that it’s meant to make people laugh. Who won’t grin if they’re reminded of fathers obsessed with watching the news? It seems like a situation that most Indian kids have and are going through. So these are the only factors that actually pulled the show.
There are not many roasting or fluent puns making the response of the crowd precise. If Biswa had pulled off quite differently, I’m sure the crowd would have roared and laughed. Overall, Mood Kharaab has less potential to lift one’s mood.
Mood Kharaab is streaming now on Amazon Prime Video. If you’ve watched the show, drop your thoughts in the comment section.
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