Saturday, June 21, 2014

Ladies vs. Ricky Bahl (live action movie), via Netflix

The Ladies vs Ricky Bahl is an Indian romantic comedy inspired by John Tucker Must Die. I'm not sure how similar the two are, since I don't think I've ever seen John Tucker Must Die.

This turned out to be better than I expected, although it was overly long and the ending was way too neat and easy. At the beginning of the movie, we see party girl Dimple, who is head-over-heels in love with her personal trainer, Sunny. Sunny tells her a sob story about how his family home was stolen from him, so Dimple convinces her father to take the house back by force. Dimple's father then buys the run-down home from Sunny. By the time he learns that it wasn't Sunny's to sell, Sunny is already gone.

Then we see Sunny, now calling himself Deven, conning a tough and determined businesswoman named Raina. Raina's mistake almost costs her her job, and she ends up on the news. Dimple sees her and calls her up, as does Saira, another woman conned by Sunny/Deven. Raina comes up with a plan: the three of them will hire charismatic and fast-talking Ishika to con the conman and get their money back.

Although I wish it had been shorter, this is one of those movies that grew on me. The bit at the beginning, with Dimple, was kind of painful to watch, because Dimple's dad fell for Sunny's con so easily – sending goons to Sunny's supposed family home without first checking to see if Sunny was telling the truth, and then buying the place without having anyone look it over first. Plus, Dimple was kind of annoying. I found that I liked Dimple, Raina, and Saira best when they were working together.

The thing I loved most about the movie was when Raina's plan was working. Although I couldn't help but think about how much work it was taking them, it was so much fun watching them trick the “Bloody Scoundrel” into spending a lot of money on cheap fakes.

The romance didn't work quite so well for me, unfortunately. Anushka Sharma (Ishika) and Ranveer Singh (Vikram/Sunny/Iqbal/Deven/Ricky) were good together, but we mostly saw things from Ishika and the other women's side. I had a hard time trusting Ricky (I'll just call him that from now on) because he lied so easily. He seemed to like Ishika as much as she had grown to like him, but he'd also seemed to genuinely enjoy Dimple and Saira's company when he was with them. I worried that Ishika was going to get her heart broken and possibly her bank account cleaned out.

The ending was way too easy and not very believable. Basically, everyone went away happy. The cotton candy sweetness of it was a bit much, although I suppose it was preferable to an ending in which nobody but Ricky got what they wanted.

All in all, this was an okay way to pass the time, even though the story fell apart a bit near the end. Watching the plan unfold was fun, and Ranveer Singh is ridiculously easy on the eyes.

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