Review: 'Bunty Aur Babli 2' should have been titled Bunty Aur Babli NGO wale

Rani Mukerji stays true to character in 'Bunty Aur Babli 2' (Image: screen grab)

If you loved the original Bunty Aur Babli, which came out in 2005, chances are you enjoyed it because the original duo (played by Rani Mukerji and Abhishek Bachchan) had big golden cojones.

It was fun to watch foolish people getting conned into buying the Taj Mahal. You probably also loved the backstories of Bunty and Babli. And even though Amitabh Bachchan’s J.C.P. Dashrath chewed on too many toothpicks, you likely enjoyed the cat and mouse game between the cons and the cops.

In the new film, the backstories of the new Bunty and Babli are boo-hoo sad: Computer graduates who didn’t get jobs and have families who depend on them, so they got into the con game.

Before you can yell ‘Watch Startup on Netflix!’, you are already throwing up into your empty coffee cup because Bunty and Bubli 2.0 have discovered they should steal from the bad guys and do some good (clean up the Ganga). Not because they’re making an oblique political reference, but because they don’t want to be bad. Blearrgh!

The new Bunty is Siddhant Singh. Looks like he’s been asked to channelise his inner flamboyance aka Ranveer Singh plus the sanskari part of Akshay Kumar. Sharvari Wagh makes for a good seductress, but she needed a Rani Mukerji moment where she claims to be Queen bee. If you thought Pankaj Tripathi was a great actor, then this film will prove how important it is to curb your enthusiasm. In trying hard to prove he can fit into J.C.P. Dashrath’s boots, this Jatayu Singh overacts to prove that he can act.

Saif Ali Khan has a tough task. He has to prove to fans of the original Bunty that a pot-bellied uncle version is good too. But it's a tougher task to convince an audience (who has overeaten during the pandemic) that he can suddenly lose belly fat by doing a few push ups. Or should we all try the green mint chutney on his head that worked better than intermittent fasting? Would the original Bunty run after the new Bunty parkouring his way all over the place? Or would he put a hand on his hip, watch the guy run, send a cop after him, and then make his way calmly to where the dude running on the rooftop would come down on the ground and then catch him?

The one saving grace of the film is Rani Mukerji who stays true to character. She still stitches her own clothes (mentions Sabyasachi twice, which means no one checked the script or with the costume design department), and still has the ‘attitude’ despite the nonsense she has to do to prove she’s still got it. I could bet my entire fortune on a very simple thing: no one else in Bollywood can carry off her clothes and the gigantic Dolce and Gabbana sunglasses like she does.

How do the cons go? They get a minister to clean up the river, they save hungry kids by catching a grain hoarding government, they steal ‘birthday funds’ from another politician. Why am I giving you spoilers? But you’ve seen all these ‘problems’ in movies already. Take the cash kept in the minister’s home, for example. Didn’t Akshay Kumar’s con guy do a better job of robbing jewels and cash posing as CBI officers in Special 26? In fact, just this week a show called Matsya Kaand released on MX Player had a cool cricket betting con, much better than this rubbish on screen.

The songs and the romance seem forced and forgettable. The absence of Gulzar and Blaaze in the lyrics is palpable. And the writing? You barf because the new Bunty comes from Assi ghat. A simple wiki search yields 89 names of ghats in Varanasi. Why choose the most obvious?

Sending the original cons to get the new con artists may be a good idea on paper, but difficult to digest. Did not one of the cops think that the four might join forces and dupe everyone? They were too busy writing seriously obnoxious child characters: the brat that belongs to the original Bunty and Babli. Totally unfunny, he joins the lineup of awful kids in movies leaderboard (little Anjali from Kuch Kuch Hota Hai still leads!). Better wait for the film to be released in a few weeks on some OTT platform. This is not really Bunty Aur Babli 2.0. This is Bunty Aur Babli, the wrong iteration released. This one is just dishwater slop served in Rosenthal china.