‘Bad Newz’ movie review: Vicky Kaushal is the spice of this incomplete dramedy

A scene from ‘Bad News’

After going for Strike, The Dharma family returns to its bread and butter recipe, where producer Karan Johar has mastered the art of pushing the boundaries but taking it off the fire much before it reaches a boiling point. Good News (2019)Director Anand Tiwari is bringing Bad News With clickbait headlines but very few details. Like popular Punjabi cinema written for Hindi-speaking audiences, this is a film that has a blaring entry of the background score before the hero arrives. The comedy centres around heteropaternal superfecundation, a rare condition where two eggs from a woman with more than one partner are fertilised by two different sperms in one menstrual cycle.

In Bollywood terms, it’s the organic effect of chemistry caused by a love triangle. And Tiwari has adapted it to the sensibilities of Bollywood bigwigs who want their films to be a blend of liberal values ​​and youthful exuberance, but can’t risk the disapproval of conservative family audiences.

Saloni Bagga (Tripti Dimri), a young chef who aspires to win a Meraki Star for her restaurant, falls in love with Akhil Chaddha (Vicky Kaushal), a dashing guy from West Delhi who runs a popular soya chaap shop. Underneath the showiness and magical charm, Akhil is a single mother’s son whose over-protective and clingy nature comes in the way of Saloni’s progress in the profession. When the two separate, Saloni shifts to a hotel in Mussoorie where she finds a cool Punjabi colleague in Gurbir (Ammy Virk), who is recovering from a broken relationship with a Gujarati girl and opening a restaurant serving Gujarati cuisine.

In a rare feat for a Hindi film heroine, Saloni succumbs to her hormones and finds that entering into a new relationship without clearing the emotional entanglements of the previous one was not so wise. Deep down behind the glitz and glamour, Saloni’s situation is a metaphor for the dilemmas a working woman faces as she juggles her career goals. The twins growing in her womb are like her career and love. Does one have to nourish the other to survive? Can they live together?

However, the way the screenplay is structured and executed leaves no room for subtlety or any attempt to touch upon the mental makeup of today’s girl. It turns Saloni’s relatable situation into a joke. In the predictable game of one-upmanship between the two fathers, there is hardly any discussion on her career for which she walked away from Akhil.

Writers Ishita Moitra and Tarun Dudeja are keen to keep the film light with humorous set pieces to keep the audience interested. Some of them work well. The insight into the elderly’s fixation with daily soaps and reality shows is spot-on. The connection between Gujarati girlfriends and non-vegetarian food rings a bell, but the situational humour is neither coherent nor consistently well-etched. References from other sources seem to have been cut and pasted without proper context and emotional impact.

It seems that the makers want the audience to watch this film Tauba Tauba, After hearing chart-busting item numbers, heterosexual overindulgence and some empty talk on the importance of Meraki Star in a chef’s career. The film feels like an advertisement for a rating system that evaluates the quality of services provided by businesses. For a film in which the three central characters are in the food business, the atmosphere does not match the ambition. It is neither true of Karol Bagh nor rooted in South Delhi.

After being declared the national crush on social media, Tripti has been going through the Bollywood antics that most actresses go through in the early stages of their career. She needs to work on her comic timing, but every time her emotional pitch rises, one can see that she maintains her comic timing. Nightingale She has qualities that make her an actor to watch out for. For a change, Sikh characters are not stereotyped in Hindi comedies and Ammy Virk impresses as a guy who perhaps values ​​brains over brawn, but the writers haven’t given the chicken-loving character enough meat in the script to make him pay attention to it.

Vicky Kaushal is the soul of this dramedy, who carries it forward despite the lack of humour and drama. His Akhil Chaddha looks like Ranveer Singh’s cousin. rocky In Johar’s world. If some of the fluidity of his dance steps got into the story, Bad News It would have brought happiness.