Subscribe to RSSSo you think you know what a Badmaash Company is?
Badmaash Company
Director : Parmeet Sethi
Writing Credits : Parmeet Sethi
Music : Pritam
Cast : Shahid Kapoor, Anushka Sharma, Vir Das, Meiyang Chang, Anupam Kher, Pavan Malhotra
What goes for it : From what I could gather from the net, its Shahid & Chang’s “hotness” & “cuteness”. God save us!!
What goes against the audience : Their decision to watch this film.
Cinemaa opinion : This film doesn’t deserve opinions. There are some facts, of course. Please scroll down for a detailed research.
What exactly is a Badmaash Company? After extensive research that lasted two and a half hours, I’ve been able to work out the intricacies of a Badmaash Company and I’m putting open the result of my research in public interest.
Item Description :
A Badmaash Company is a company of four friends in a film helmed by an extremely incompetent director. Not just a director, this incompetent specimen also happens to be its writer. And he has gone on record that he wrote it in just 6 days. Disclaimer : The audio could have been garbled and I might’ve heard 6th grade as 6 days. No difference though! He gets his history wrong – Economic liberalisation started in ’91 and not around 95-96 as the film would have us believe. He gets his geography wrong – The Golden Gate bridge & Queens, NYC happen to be on opposite coastlines of the US mainland and it would take more than a casual romp in a car to get from the former to the latter. He gets his mathematics wrong – 2000*1000 = 2 Million. And with an investment of 2 Million + operating expenses and a revenue of 2 Million, only a PricewaterhouseCoopers auditor would mark it as a profit. And before any PWC minion sues me for libel, make sure you google PricewaterhouseCoopers+Satyam+Maytas. I do my research better than Parmeet Sethi. Pop Quiz : Kya Parmeet Sethi Paanchvi Paas se Tez Hai???
There are four friends that make up a Badmaash Company. The self-styled BOSS of the pack is a dreamer who is born in a family stuffed with cliches. No wonder he’s claustrophobic at home. The second is a child of a lesser god…I mean a junior artist’s son. The third…well…he exists only to satisfy the dominant imbecile in the director’s personality. The fourth is the femme unfatale…what good is a bollywood film without a heroine anyways? Moreso, these friends are enacted by matching actors. Shahid Kapoor as the BOSS personifies Double Cheese with Extra Cheese. Vir Das looks perenially lost as the junior actor’s son. No, make that LOST. Meiyang Chang is LOL!!!, but in a very bad way. And Anushka Sharma tries her best to make a point – I can fit into a sex-kitten image, my discomfort is immaterial. And these four friends are propped up by Anupam Kher (wasted), Kiron Juneja (wasted) & Pavan Malhotra (#EPICWASTED).
A Badmaash Company indulges in schemes that redefine hare-brained, to make money. Idiots don’t even realise that they’re hardly making any, since the writer’s maths is messed up anyways. And are they persistant? They keep redoing the first trick so many times that even a kid starts seeing through it and the audience starts snoozing. Thankfully, MMS makes a grand entry and saves the day. Oops!! This is a family oriented company. No Debonairblog or DPS stuff here. MMS here is THE MMS, our ex-FM & current PM, who liberalised the economy in the early 90′s. So, when the first trick runs out of steam completely, the company redirects the focus of its childishness to the promised land. There, they do an inspired version (just like Pritam was “inspired” by Dire Straits while composing the riffs for Fakeera) of the only trick they know, only to realise that even though top executives of America’s top leather goods importer might be as dumb as they come, their police is extra smart. Bubble burst, they move into property scams, trying to fleece a bank with something that couldn’t even get through the risk management procedures of 19th century banks. And since that would leave people asking for more, their last con even has THE MJ unknowingly and unsuspectedly helping them by wearing a $8 shirt to a concert.
The film’s script is an abomination. The reasons for which the team forms this con-company make me go…WTF!!! The reasons why they eventually disintegrate make me go…WTF!!!!!! And whatever strength remains in me is sapped by the reasons why they come back together by making me go…WT BLOODY F!!!!!!!!! Twists & turns, my foot. The only “comedy” comes out of extremely juvenile racist jokes and Sethi’s radar spans quite a range in this regard. There are a few on Sindhis, a lot many on mongoloids (and then these racist sob’s expect people from the north-east to exhibit “patriotism”), a few on American whites, but the worst are reserved for American blacks. Makes me wonder how they get away with this insensitive racist tone and how people lap it up. And what’s with bollywood recent obsession with bad racial humour aimed at blacks? First it was Housefull, and now this. Did Sajid Khan & Parmeet Sethi mistake this for black humour?
Effect on the viewer’s health :
A single view of Badmaash Company can do many things depending on the viewers’ expectations & how closely involved they happen to be with the proceedings. For casual viewers, this may end up in anything between a short nap and a long snooze. For people expecting something great, this can end up as the reason for a crisis of faith in cinema. For those expecting a breezy and youthful entertainer, this can be like a ride across Karnataka’s state highways in a merc without shocks. For reviewers like me, this is stale bad news…have reviewed so many bad films of late that I might end up getting repetitive in my reviews. For the likes of Taran Adarsh & his followers, this could be better than Ocean’s Eleven. For those left out, this is plain torture.
Final Inference :
By now, do you think you know what a Badmaash Company is like? I don’t think so. The true Badmaash Company is YRF. A production house that boasts of a lineage like Kabhie Kabhie, Kala Patthar, Silsila, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge etc. has turned renegade. How else can you explain the likes of New York, Dil Bole Hadippa, Pyaar:Impossible & Badmaash Company? Its high time the viewers stopped giving them the credit they held long back, but themselves negated over the last few years, and don’t deserve it anymore. Its high time YRF realises that it needs to win back the trust of movie-goers before they can claim to be a production house of value. And it’s high time I end. Any more and whatever I’ve held back so far will pour out and the content won’t be suitable for viewers of all ages.
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16 Comments
Sam, WOW!!!! This must be the best review I've ever read!!! WOW! WOW! WOW! Am in a serious inferiority complex mode!!!
More power to you!
@Fatema : Arre baba…don't feel inferior…makes me feel bad. And anyways, YRF brings out the best in me. Love them so much.
LOL! But I LOVE the out-of-the-box thinking. Excellent! Not to mention the syntax and semantics!
And, believe it or not NOW I want to watch the film!!!! Teehee!
Didn't think about the syntax & semantics at all. just that I was scared of sounding too repetitive and yes…thought out of the box. After all, I'm a die-hard Edward DeBono chela.
I am only thanking my stars that my wife isn't keen to watch this MASH from a BAD COMPANY. Otherwise would have been tortured for two weeks in a row. Bad luck for u. But the good part is that I had fun reading this
Thank you, Sudhir. This was issued in public interest and its good that the public is benefitting.
so another weekend, and another over-hyped, piece of crap movie – trying to con people to shell money and watch it .
no wonder piracy thrives. who , in their right mind would shell their hard -money for shit like this which gets doled out every friday ?
The best part about the movies that have been releasing of late is that I get to read such brilliant reviews. And this one has served the very important purpose of restoring my perspective, because of late, I had begun to think that my standards are far too high. This review has just changed that opinion, however. Now I know our movies really are shitty. Kind of also explains why the cheesiest wannabe 'doo-d' I know went for the show the first day, and came back all impressed. Also explains why despite living and working in Mumbai for over 4 years, he still has to borrow money to pay the rent every month. And also loves watching the Great Indian Laughter Challenge.
Awesome review…..will I get to watch atleast one hindi movie this summer?
@Bipin : Even piracy is a waste of time and money for such films. Why would I want to pay even 40 bucks or block my bandwidth that I could use to download something better than crap like this?
@Ravi : I have a lot of hopes from Rajneeti. Prakash Jha hasn't disappointed me ever…and this looks quite ambitious.
@Ronnie : Don't even get me started on the wannabes. I've been breaking my head with a couple of them on another website…but they won't budge from their "this movie is great…no matter what logic & reason say" stand.
And LOL @ The Great Indian Laughter Challenge…freaky…but I was going to refer to that in my review of Housefull.
Sameer – The review is great! I wish I lived in a place which screened Indian movies. But I don't… so whenever we get to Arizona, where we have our home, we try to catch whatever movie we can. And thus I ended up watching Badmaash Company.
To start with…. Anushka Sharma – everytime she spoke in English, I cringed. It was almost like she never spoke in English before she acted in this movie… which is fine by me. But then, why did she need to do it in this one? (the language used was so current. No one spoke like that in India in the mid-90s.) And who wears evening gowns to Casinos? And she grew a conscience one evening and the next morning she was again like, "Let's do it"
The entire movie was an insult to the audience's intelligence!
Shaahid Kapoor – This was probably the worst role of his career so far. Only a moron like Taran Adarsh could say it is one of Shaahid's best.
Parmeet Sethi – I'd rather he go back to playing Detective Omkarnath. The movie seemed like a patchwork of scenes from movies he had seen before. The father-son-mother scenes from "Khosla Ka Ghosla", the loud mama character from Pawan Malhotra's character in "Jab We Met" (He even got the same actors to play the same roles!) Some of Shaahid's dialogues were like SRK's from DDLJ. The scene where Shaahid calls up his mom and the song preceding that, lifted from "Dil chaahta hai". The comedy was very Sajid Khan – ish (but people were laughing their hearts out!) and the con make-up (when will directors realize that putting on a moustache no longer works as a disguise!) was straight out of Dhoom2/Hero: The Love Story of a Spy etc.
But Taran Adarsh went on about the movie like it was the best one ever made. Maybe he should be made to watch this movies 10 times – with nowhere to run. Maybe then, he'll apologize.
And yes, what's with all these racist jokes? Suddenly Indians seem to think it is okay to demean other people. We should know better – having been at the receiving end of it for decades. In almost every movie 'goras' are apparently dumb and "Blacks" are well, "Blacks". Of course, this movie has a Chinese angle too!!!!
And yes, I don't even want to get started on the history-geography-finance part of the movie!
The only time I laughed in the movie was when the song "Fakeera" came on. It looked (and sounded) SO ridiculous that I burst out laughing…..
Debashri : I so love these long comments of yours. Thanks.
Anushka is worse than Kangana when it comes to mouthing English dialogues. Wonder why they're even given any. She looked so wannabe saying "Eff off".
As for patchworks, even they can be entertaining if done right. But sadly…doing it right is something I hardly expect from Bollywood directors these days…unless they have a history of doing things right.
I had a discussion with another critic (a first-timer) about the racial humour. What she had to say was that "Every joke is on someone. And the characters also stop joking about the chinese angle when admonished. Also, there's no malice in the jokes…they're like friendly banter.". Thank God for small mercies, I felt. He stops, only to start off again in the next scene. And the malice comes forth in the caricature that the Reebok executive is. I just wish Reebok sues YRF for defamation. Was also reminded about Chak De… where Shimit Amin handled the chinese jokes so sensitively. A guy makes a joke and the comeback, though a tad cliched, is extremely powerful and restores the balance so nicely.
Fakeera was an insult to Dire Straits more than anything else. And yes…it was damn funny.
Adi Chopra seems to be doing a great job of bringing down Yash Raj Films down to Gutter Level, an institution his Dad had built up with so much love and care over the decades, he is destroying it all in less than that.
BTW Parmeet Sethi also is famous for belonging to the Rapists League of Bollywood-Prem Chopra, Shakti Kapoor, Gulshan Grover.
"For the likes of Taran Adarsh & his followers, this could be better than Ocean’s Eleven. "
Geez even considering that TA does not even have a little bit of any sense or sensibility, this really is quite high from him. Pass the dope please.
Ratnakar : How could you miss the chairman of the rapists' league – Ranjeetsaab?
Agree on the Adi part. I think he's gone senile even before daddy.
Once in a while, racial jokes are fine. But when they are repeated much too often, they don't remain jokes anymore. Have you seen this stupid film named "Hello"? In a call-center training session in that film(or something like that), the trainees are told that the intelligence of an average 30 year old American is equivalent to the IQ of a 10 year old Indian!!! And that is just a 'gora' joke… 'kaala' jokes are even worse!
BTW, my husband and I were joking that the grossly overacting foreign actors in "Badmaash Company" were hired from the same company as the fake Obama and the other overacting actors from "My Name is Khan"
. Don't you agree? Maybe Karan Johar got YRF a discount coupon 
.