Badmaash Company Review: An Insult to Movie Making

I wish there were a way for me to go back in time and hand this review to my past self. I know the ramifications could include destroying the universe or creating an alternate reality, but if it allows me to erase my memory of Badmaash Company I would be more than glad to.

With his directorial debut, Parmeet Sethi, actor turned director, really drops the ball with Badmaash Company. Even with big name actors such as Shahid Kapur and Anushka Sharma, Sethi’s vision suffers from lackluster performances. Alongside a script that’s mind numbingly insulting to the audience, packed with cliché after cliché, and lack of originality, Badmaash Company is a movie I deeply detested.

Set back in the 1990’s the film follows three friends Karan (Shahid Kapur), Zing (Meiyang Chang), and Chandu (Vir Das) as they venture off to Bangkok after their college graduation. Working for a local drug smuggler, the three friends act as mules to get the goods there and back to India. On the flight over they become acquainted with the fourth member of the operation, Bulbul (Anushka Sharma), who Karan instantly falls for. There is absolutely no chemistry or reasoning leading to the two to fall for each other, yet they still do. After coming back from the trip, which was met with no opposition what so ever, Karan decides to confront his father (Anupam Kher) about not going to grad school. His father argues that a great mind like Karan’s shouldn’t be wasted. Karan counters by saying he’ll find another way to support himself instead of working long hours at an office causing him to sacrifice a family life. This causes his father to drop a line that pretty much is the Hindi equivalent of Uncle Ben’s “with great power comes great responsibility.” Ignoring his father’s words Karan rounds up his three friends from the trip to Bangkok and starts a get quick rich operation of his own. However, instead of trying to do something illegal Karan uses his brain to do it legally using loopholes.

If you are going to base a movie off of get quick operations do the audience a favor and don’t insult them. They take the same operation and literally repeat it four different times throughout the movie. Not only that, Sethi decided it would be a great idea to walk you through the operation and then show it being done. You literally saw the same scam being played out eight times in the movie with different items.

Of course, once Karan and company become rich and successful from their schemes greed break the group apart. Cliché! Karan’s life falls apart, he loses his love, his friends, gets arrested for fraud, and ends up serving six months in jail. After he gets out Karan starts working from the bottom of the job chain doing whatever odd job he can find to support himself. One day at a random diner Bulbul finds Karan to tell him she’s pregnant with his child. I literally through my hands up in the air and shouted, “OH COME ON” at the ridiculous of it all. She randomly finds him in a diner in New York City. Randomly!?!?!? Pleaseeeee. But wait, that’s not the most ridiculous moment of the entire movie.

After his uncle’s clothing shipment becomes ruined by colors washing out on the shirts Karan comes to the rescue with a plan of his own. However to pull it off Karan needs the rest of his friends he lost all those months ago…… I swear this movie reeks of cliché. By coming up with a marketing scheme to sell them as shirts that change colors with every wash, the group manages to make them a success by getting Michael Jackson to wear it at a concert…..

No, I really wish I was making this up. I really do. Michael Jackson wears the shirt at a concert allowing Karan to save his uncle’s company. Seriously, who thinks of such an idea? Was this script written over a week or something…. “According to Parmeet Sethi, he wrote the entire script of the film in six days flat.”

THIS EXPLAINS SOOOOO MUCH. None of the characters had any dimensions what so ever. Karan and Bulbul’s relationship is shoddily thrown together just so Sethi could add a love element. I would try to describe the characters, but I can’t. There is no life to them, nor words to characterize them. It’s as bad as Padme and Jar Jar Binks in the Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. You just can’t describe the characters at all because there is nothing to them. The only character with any dimension in the entire movie was Karan’s father, who happens to lay out the moral of the movie.

By putting in time and hard work will you be happy and achieve greatness in life, Karan’s father says in the movie. I really can’t believe Parmeet Sethi had wrote that in a script that took him six days to write. With amateurish film-making, a terrible story, and lackluster characters I could not recommend Badmaash Company to anyone. Perhaps if Sethi put in some time and hard work things could have been A LOT different.

My Advice – Stay away from this movie at all cost.

GRADE – F