If I had no clue that Madhur Bhandarkar directed Babli Bouncer, it would have been just one of those forgettable comedies for me. Seeing the sheer blandness in the new Tamannaah Bhatia starrer, one would wonder how a national award-winning director like Bhandarkar thought this was enough to entertain people. With shoddy writing and shallow characters, Babli Bouncer can’t even fall in the wasted opportunity category.
Babli Tanwar belongs to this village in Punjab, where the men had only one dream job. Become a bouncer in any Delhi club. While attending a wedding in her village, Babli falls in love with a young man named Viraj, who stays in Delhi. To let him know about her feelings, Babli decided to find ways to reach Delhi, and coincidentally her fiance Kukku offered her the job of a female bouncer. The changes that happened in Babli’s life after her arrival in Delhi as a bouncer are what we see in Babli Bouncer.
As a germ of an idea, a female bouncer from Punjab is worth trying. But Bhandarkar and his writers are clueless about where to place their characters. It’s like, they wanted to create something like Kangana’s Queen, but they were short on budget and imagination. The movie’s writing knows to place those transformation points for the characters, but it just doesn’t seem to know how to reach from point A to point B convincingly. There is a point in the movie where Babli tells her crush she now knows the importance of being independent, and the film cuts to a slow-motion walk. And I am like, what exactly happened which made her a Rani overnight?
Cowritten by Madhur Bhandarkar, Babli Bouncer has thick strokes in its writing, even when it is not in that light-hearted zone. Even when you see characters going through major emotional transitions, it just doesn’t have any impact due to the terrible writing. They sometimes make characters behave stupidly in order to create a scene that was already part of the template. And Babli being a bouncer, is just there for the sake of setting a different backdrop. The music was pretty underwhelming.
Tamannaah Bhatia, as Babli, is trying to get out of the “gorgeous” tag she has been carrying in her entire career, but somewhere, the portrayal feels like a fancy dress. Abhishek Bajaj and Sahil Vaid are the forgettable Romeos of Babli. Saurabh Shukla plays that typical Punjabi father.
Babli Bouncer is a tasteless comedy that wants to be light and motivational but ends up being thin and yawn-inducing. Madhur Bhandarkar is trying to create a film that is a blend of all the familiar ingredients of a feel-good movie, but all he can create is a pointless mishmash.
Babli Bouncer is a tasteless comedy that wants to be light and motivational but ends up being thin and yawn-inducing.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
