Annu Kapoor pronounces the word secularism like he is trying to spit out a warm grape that has gone entirely wrong, and if I'm honest, that little vocal tic carries about half of Dharam Sankat Mein on its tired shoulders. You sit there in the dark watching him lean across a desk in a set that looks suspiciously like a rented banquet hall in Goregaon, his teeth clicking against the consonant, and you realize how much heavy lifting character actors are expected to do in Hindi movies when the script refuses to leave the shallow end of the pool. Paresh Rawal is playing Dharam Pal, an ordinary man who discovers late in life that he was born a Muslim and raised as a devout Hindu by adoptive parents, which is the kind of premise that usually ends up wrapped in tricolor bunting and high-minded speeches about national integration. But director Fuad Khan keeps pulling the thing back toward farce, or at least he tries to, darting between domestic bickering and heavy-handed social satire with all the grace of a drunk uncle navigating a crowded dance floor at a Punjabi wedding. The screenplay, adapted loosely from The Infidel, translates the British-Pakistani culture clash into the very specific texture of suburban Indian paranoia, where every neighbor knows what vegetable you bought this morning and your political leanings are broadcast via the color of your front door. It is a messy affair that never quite decides whether it wants to be a gentle ribbing of communal absurdities or a straight-faced drama about identity crises.

Rawal has played this exact shade of bewildered middle-class anxiety in about twenty different films since OMG Oh My God!, but he still finds new ways to twitch his mustache when confronted with an unfamiliar prayer mat or a plate of mutton he isn't supposed to eat. His Dharam Pal is a man constructed entirely of small prejudices and loud knee-jerk reactions, terrified of his own shadow and even more terrified of what the local temple committee might say if they catch him wearing the wrong kind of skullcap. The performance relies heavily on double-takes and exasperated sighs, yet Rawal grounds the cartoonish setup in something recognizable, especially in the quieter scenes where he sits alone in his kitchen trying to figure out which direction Mecca is supposed to be without looking like an idiot. Then Naseerudin Shah shows up as a spiritual guru who lives in a compound that looks like an ashram designed by a real estate developer who watched too many spiritual documentaries on YouTube, and the movie shifts gears violently. Shah is having fun, there is no doubt about that, wearing silk kurtas that cost more than my first car and delivering lines about cosmic energy with a straight face that borders on brilliant mockery. It reminds you of his work in Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro if you squint hard enough and strip away thirty years of television commercials, though the material here rarely gives him room to stretch beyond a few extended cameos where he gets to patronize everyone in the room. Murli Sharma pops up as a fiery neighborhood zealot whose sole narrative function is to stand in doorways and look offended, which he does with professional efficiency while chewing on what appears to be an endless supply of fennel seeds.

The visual style of the thing is flat in that particular way digital video often is when the budget ran out somewhere around the second schedule, with lighting that makes every interior look like it was shot under the harsh fluorescent tubes of a government registry office. There is a recurring drone shot of Mumbai suburbs that appears at least four times too many, every single time accompanied by the exact same percussion sting on the soundtrack, and it bugged me every time it happened because the editor couldn't find a fresh transition to save his life. The songs arrive like uninvited guests at a family dinner, loud and entirely forgettable, pulling the narrative to a screeching halt so people can dance awkwardly in front of brightly painted backdrops that smell faintly of plywood and fresh paste. Yet the camera does occasionally linger on Rawal's face during moments of genuine panic, capturing the petty selfishness of a man who doesn't want to save the world or heal religious divides, but simply wants his daughter to get married without the neighbors gossiping about his circumcision status. That specific brand of small-minded panic is where the film finds its pulse, dodging the grand pronouncements that usually sink these types of social comedies.

We have seen this territory mapped out before in commercial Hindi cinema, usually with much more sugar and a lot less bite, though My Name Is Khan tried to tackle similar anxieties with a sledgehammer where this one uses a plastic butter knife. The themes of belonging and inherited belief systems are treated with a sort of nervous laughter, as if the makers were constantly glancing over their shoulders to make sure nobody in the audience was getting too uncomfortable. Dharam Pal has to learn how to pray from YouTube tutorials, which is both a very modern joke and a slightly sad commentary on how disconnected urban populations have become from their own ritual practices. It is a film about the armor we wear in public, the names we use to avoid trouble, and the way our neighbors become our private police force whether we want them to or not. When the climax arrives, bringing all the various factions into one crowded room for a shouting match that resolves nothing of importance, you realize the picture has been running on fumes for the last twenty minutes.

The sound design deserves a special mention for its aggressive insistence on telling you how to feel every single second, pumping in upbeat sitar riffs whenever a joke lands and dropping into low bass rumbles whenever someone mentions a riot. It is the kind of sonic hand-holding that treats the audience like they are watching with one eye on a cricket score and the other on a smartphone. Yet despite all the mechanical flaws and the predictable plotting, there is an accidental honesty in how clumsy the whole thing feels, mirroring the actual awkwardness of people trying to live next door to each other without losing their minds. Paresh Rawal holding a Quran like it’s a live grenade is an image that stays with you long after the credits roll on a black screen devoid of any clever final punchlines.