Movie Review: Bunti Aur Bubli 2
Bunty Aur Babli 2: 1 of 5
Star Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Rani Mukerji, Siddhant Chaturvedi, Sharvari Wagh, Pankaj Tripathi, Rajiv Gupta
Director: Varun V. Sharma
It’s been 16 years since Rakesh’s Bunty (not Abishek Bachchan) & Vimmi’s Babli (still Rani Mukerji) haven’t looted anyone living a happy family life. Until one day, YRF got the idea of remaking its classic and now we’ve Bunty, Babli 2.0 in Kunal (Siddhant Chaturvedi), Sonia (Sharvari Wagh) to trap & rob people. It must’ve been a gloomy childhood for them as from the thousands of inspiring figures worldwide, they choose to follow con-artists Bunty & Babli.
Jatayu (straight out of Ludo Pankaj Tripathi) replaces Bachchan’s Dashrath as the inspector & he does what anyone at his post would do, abduct Bunty & Babli and tie them to chairs placing on the railway track. When the (half) OG pair get to know about some newbies tarnishing their ‘brand image’, they decide to help the police in catching them red-handed. What happens next? You wouldn’t want to know.
Director Varun V. Sharma has also penned the story as well and it’s the classic case of “Sometimes I’ll start a sentence (read: movie), and I don’t even know where it’s going. I just hope I find it along the way” (Spoiler alert: he doesn’t). Full marks for the idea of bringing in another pair giving a fight to the new one but it’s the execution of the idea that’s sloppy. It takes away everything that its predecessor stood for, from proper character building to the locations playing an extra.
Saif Ali Khan tries a little too hard to fill in Bachchan’s shoes in this one. Though the body language is completely different because of the 16-years jump, the accent comes across as artificial at times.
Rani Mukerji’s Vimmi has always been a loud character but this time it really bothered me because of its poor sketch. Apart from one or two genuine sequences, she was too loud too often.
Before going into it, I had the maximum expectations from Siddhant Chaturvedi because of course Gully Boy, but like every other good actor on the list even he fails to attract the attention with basically nothing.
Retaining Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy from the original was probably the best decision made by the makers but even they can’t save the sinking ship. The poor script initiates a domino effect shattering everything else in the film. Apart from Luv Ju (that too to some extent), not a single song lands well. Only if you remember how classic songs of the original were.
