Badmaash Company

I rather liked Badmaash Company – it’s a good timepass movie - and it sure makes Anushka Sharma look good. True, it has been panned by most of the regular reviewers. But I didn’t find anything really amiss in the movie – except for the lack of a surprising twist/turn. The entire story seems like a smooth, whipped-up-in-a-mixer version of several movies in the past. The movie is polished to look at, but all the elements of the story you have seen somewhere else before. But you continue to watch it because the performance of its four lead characters has a distinct appeal due to their rawness. Vir Das and Meiyang Chang, in their first movie appearances, do ok while Shahid Kapoor looks 10 years younger.
(PS – Actually Vir Das has done a blink-and-miss appearances in couple of movies before. But this is first full length role)

The plot is your typical four friends who take up crime as a way of life to get rich. These guys don’t join the underworld, but smuggle things into the country using their brains and audacity (the movie is set in the 1990s when import duties on everything was atleast 100%). Then with success, come some predictable twists and turns – before it ends on a big happy note.

Debutant director Parmeet Sethi has played things safe by going with known formulas. There is Anushka to spice things up on the screen with her bikini act, but there is not much else to surprise. The songs of the movie are definitely below-par – something not normally seen on Yash Raj movies. And there is just one serious laugh-out-loud moment in the beginning of the movie. To be fair, this wasn’t supposed to be a laugh riot – it was made like a teenybopper con movie about 4 friends, and that’s what it is.