Band Baaja Baaraat (2010)

January 2010: Pyaar Impossible! – aka Uday Chopra’s Face Impossible! Predictable geek-gets-girl rom-com plays like Shrek for the Bollywood-lovin’ junta; fails.

May 2010: Badmaash Company – aka Lol, Aditya Chopra, what you smokin’, bro? ‘Honesty is the best policy’ theme stretched thin [all 2.5 hours of it.] The climax: Hero saves the day by marketing defective t-shirts as Bleeding Madras – with Michael Jackson as brand ambassador. Film ends. Madras bleeds. With shame.

August 2010: Lafangey Parindey – aka it’s Rocky. No it’s Black. Wait – it’s Dirty Dancing. Neil Nitin Mukesh channels sadak-chaap, Munnabhai MBBS, etc; fails. Deepika Padukone tries to prove nobody puts Pinky in a corner; fails. Film’s as blind as her. Bland. I mean bland.

Right. So Yash Raj Films has obviously not had a good run this year. Gone are the days of Chandni, of [controversial yet sublime] Lamhe, of DDLJ or Dil To Pagal Hai. Sure, there have been a couple of hits in recent years [Chak De! India and the Dhoom franchise, for example] but it’s mostly gone downhill for Yash Chopra and co. since the new millennium. It was thus with practically zero expectations – and, post I Hate Luv Storys [But Not Really, As My Kitschy Film Will Testify] and Break Ke Baad [Waapis Cinema-Hall Mat Jaana] with mild hatred for the rom-com – that I sat down to watch YRF’s latest offering Band Baaja Baaraat.

The verdict: BBB turns out to be a pleasant surprise, and then some. This is possibly one of the most refreshing, honest, uncomplicated and believable films to come out of the Yash Raj camp in years. Gone are the done-to-death Swiss locales – the film has its heart set in Dilli – inaccessible characters, or narratives that defy logic [I’m looking at you Neal n’ Nikki, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi & Dil Bole Haddipa!] – replaced instead by a film that might be small on budget, but is big on heart.

The Plot: Twenty-something Delhiites – the driven, no-nonsense Shruti [Anushka Sharma] and slacker Bittoo [Ranveer Singh in his debut] – both from a middle-class background, enter the business world together by creating a wedding planning enterprise [‘Shaadi Mubarak’], a venture which proves to be tumultuous: Shruti breaks her own ‘Jisse vyapaar karo, usse kabhi na pyaar karo’ [Don’t mix business with pleasure] rule – and in the midst of the glitz and glam of Delhi weddings, their friendship and business are both tested .. till the film reaches its staple happily-ever-after ending.

In a nutshell: It’s a coming-of-age story, Monsoon Wedding isshtyle.

And of course, you’ve seen or heard of similar themes in recent Bollywood flicks – unreciprocated love leading to ‘Oh-sh*t-I-love-her-and-how-convenient-the-film’s-just-about-to-end’ was seen most recently in I Hate Luv Storys – but what makes this film special is dialogue and presentation. Interwoven with the novel concept of a behind-the-scenes look-see at weddings, the romance works because the dialogues [Habib Faisal] do. The screenplay keeps it simple, and most importantly real. Shruti’s not your average size-zero heroine: fierce, independent, emotional, she’s a woman of substance, and Bittoo, with his Dilli-rooted witticisms – broken English et al, is your average head-scratching, purposeless mundaa turned Alpha male turned Roadside Romeo [product placement!]

Two ordinary protagonists – but never prosaic. It is that girl/boy-next-door persona that makes them so accessible to audiences. Casting newcomer Ranveer Singh and two-film [RNBDJ & Badmaash Company] old Anushka Sharma was a stroke of brilliance; spontaneous, unsophisticated, unorthodox – both actors deliver pitch-perfect performances, and their chemistry is, to borrow a trite phrase, electrifying. Ali Zafar [Tere Bin Laden] faces stiff competition at the Filmfares for best male debut from Bandra boy Ranveer Singh – twice in the same year you’re reminded of Ranbir Kapoor’s stellar work in SLB’s Saawariya.

Anushka’s performance is stuff of true grit: notice an [underplayed] emotional sequence in the second half where both speak candidly of what was a one-night-stand to one, something infinitely more concrete to the other.

Then there’s the presentation itself: the opening number [‘Tarkeebein’] wraps up the differing personas/lifestyles of both characters in a neat three minutes; something – ahem – most Bollywood films take up till intermission to accomplish. The pace is swift; consistently so. There’s little melodrama, lots of mauj-masti, the language is colloquial, and you really get a kick out of watching what goes on in planning a wedding. Yes, it channels the feel-good chick-flick lovers in all of us. And the music’s a winner: you’ll find yourself humming ‘Tarkeebein’ and ‘Ainvayi Ainvayi’ [the latter song and ‘Baari Barsi’ are sure to find their way in the mehndi-DJ’s playlist alongside the Munnis and the Sheilas out there] well after the movie’s finished.

Sure, the last 15 minutes or so tread screenplay-of-convenience territory [actually, the entire subplot to reunite the quarreling duo via loaded-fairy-godmother Mr Sidhwani and his daughter’s multi-crore Rajasthani wedding is bizarre], but at that point, you’re so drawn into the lives of Shruti and Bittoo, you’re ready to forgive [the fact that even though Shahrukh Khan doesn’t show up to shake a leg at said wedding, Bittoo & Shruti manage to engage rabid aunties with a big-scale Bollywood dance number of their own. I’m sorry what?] and forget.

Perhaps the greatest triumph of Band Baaja Baaraat is how it turns out to be the antithesis of what constitutes Bollywood: even in the midst of obligatory song-and-dance numbers, the predictability aspect [Will they get together in the end – wait, am I stupid], the motley gang of so-loyal-it-hurts friends, you relate to the wonderfully refreshing characters and revel in their journey – much as you did with Aditya and Geet in Imtiaz Ali’s wonderful Jab We Met.

At times it seems so non-filmi, you forget it’s fiction. And that’s something debutant director Maneesh Sharma should be proud of.

This over a Golmaal 3 or a No Problem any given Friday – Osman Khalid Butt

Rating – 3.75 out of 5

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 2010, Genre – Drama, Country – India, Language – Hindi, Producer – Aditya Chopra, Director – Maneesh Sharma, Music Director – Salim Merchant, Sulaiman Merchant, Cast - Anushka Sharma, Ranveer Singh

Badmaash Company (2010)

What do the box office results say about the Indian audience? When movies such as Badmaash Company fare well at the box office, and attract large audiences, what can one conclude about their taste in films?

Don’t get me wrong, the trailers were good enough to attract anyone easily: foreign location, beautiful babe, friends having a good time – that’s an easy enough formula to adhere to if the filmmakers want the movie to be watched by a lot of people.

Therefore the box office doesn’t really represent how good or bad the movie actually is; it only represents the amount of people that actually make their way to the cinemas to watch it.

That can be the only logical explanation, as one cannot understand why Badmaash Company would do so well otherwise. The movie opened to a good start, and earned fairly well. However the movie itself was not worth all the brouhaha.

The movie is about four friends who want to make it big. Well, honestly, it’s about one person who wants to make it big and gets help from his three friends. Therefore they con their way into success, where they’re living the high life. Eventually, karma hits them, and they fall with the same speed and impact, as when they were soaring high. Added with a bunch of songs shot in clubs and on the beach, some sizzling scenes between the two leads and the typical good-always-triumphs-over-bad ending, you have Badmaash Company in a nutshell.

However, the elements that were supposed to work for the movie are the reason why the movie failed. The plot could have worked, had everything else not been so forcefully added to the plate.

For instance, the unnecessary vulgarity, the crude dialogues, the lavish spending sprees – all seemed really fake and unnatural. They show Shahid as the mastermind behind all their cons, and the one determined to make it big one day and he aids the gang to their riches. But the irritating part was that after every con they pulled, they would show a scene (or a song) where they all would spend all their money on clothes and gambling and other useless things, and it all seemed so forced. Bollywood movies need to stop doing the overly glamourous thing when it isn’t looking right.

The second element which failed was the spice that was being forcefully making its way through onto the screen with the help of Anushka Sharma: the lady is fierce and strong, is an aspiring model, barely wears any clothes – basically everything that makes a woman sexy. Even then, her dialogues most of the times seemed trashy and totally unnecessary.

The second half of the movie sees a dramatic change in Shahid, when he takes the entire posse to Manhattan, and becomes so arrogant and conceited that he calls himself god at one point. What exactly was that about? He is a man with morals in the start, and after 60 minutes, we see him calling himself god, where the rest of the gang actually starts clapping and hooting afterwards!

The ending was based on a ridiculous scheme they come up with, which is absolutely honest, but clever. Therefore, he attempts to make up for all the wrong he has done by doing good. The earlier cons were actually believable, but the last final scheme which was supposed to be the biggest plan did not even make sense. So are they saying that big corporations in America are that stupid that they actually fell for the idiocy?

The most amusing part is that the movie was supposed to be a comedy, but there wasn’t a single joke that could have made anyone even smile if nothing else.

The magic of Yash Raj Films seems to be fading, as it continues to produce one failed production after another. Unfortunately, you can’t even watch these movies with your families anymore. Badmaash Company (if it absolutely must be watched out of curiosity) must not be viewed with children or young adults, or even parents for that matter. Otherwise be prepared to face some embarrassment, and quicken your reflexes to be able to quickly grab the remote control, and forward the scenes before harming anyone’s childhood – Manal Faheem Khan

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 2010, Genre – Comedy, Country – India, Language – Hindi, Producer – Aditya Chopra, Director – Parmeet Sethi, Music Director – Pritam Chakraborty, Cast - Shahid Kapoor, Anushka Sharma, Meiyang Chang, Vir Das, Anupam Kher, Kiran Juneja, Pawan Malhotra, Jameel Khan