Bad Newz has been there in everyone’s feed ever since we all saw Vicky Kaushal floating on-screen with that Tauba Tauba hook step, which may have given knee pain to a lot of people. When it comes to the film, the writing is so sloppy that I really wondered how Anand Tiwari, who made a fairly engaging Love per Square Foot and the Amazon Prime Video series Bandish Bandits, decided to settle for a film with such broad strokes. With the desperation for using the comedy timing of its leading man, Vicky Kaushal, Bad Newz loses focus and just becomes a collection of discrete gags.
The story revolves around a woman named Saloni Bagga, a chef who was married to a man named Akhil Chadha. Because of the insensitive behavior of Akhil, the marriage didn’t last long. While trying to make Saloni reconsider her decision, Akhil gets to know that she is pregnant. But things got complicated when she asked him to take a paternal test since she had sex with another man named Gurbir Pannu as well. The drama that unfolds in this pregnancy when the trio gets to know that it is a case of heteropaternal superfecundation, where there will be twin babies with two fathers, is what we witness in Bad Newz.
What you have read above is not a major spoiler since the movie’s trailer has shown us all these details. But when the film reaches the interval point with heteropaternal superfecundation being a big reveal, I was like, you shouldn’t have cut the trailer that way. One pregnancy with two biological fathers is a one-liner that can excite anyone. But the issue with this script written by Ishita Moitra and Tarun Dudeja is that it goes after very banal scripting tropes to move things forward, and they are basically jumping from one point to another without really showing any progression in the emotional dynamics between the characters. Towards the climax, when every character is raving about Akhil, the kind of humor we had to sit through till that point won’t make us have the same feeling about Mr. Chadha.
One of the reasons why I personally feel Vicky Kaushal is a big name in the future of the Hindi film industry is because of how he can handle humor. He has that effortlessness and energy in him to make some of the Kapil Sharma-ish jokes work on screen. Vulnerable bits are already his comfort zone, and towards the end of the movie, he applies that to make us root for the character even though there is no big support from the script. Unlike the Tauba Tauba song, Triptii Dimri is not ignored when it comes to the performance part, as her character is the most important one in the script. Considering the loud and gallery-pleasing tempo of the script, I would say Triptii has delivered a fairly good performance. I have not seen many films of Ammy Virk other than Bhuj and 83. There is a limitation to his set of expressions, and his performance works only when the character is in that clueless state, and in the rest of the scenarios, his performance falls flat.
If you watch the trailer of the film and the video of the Mere Mehaboob song on YouTube, that’s pretty much the entire film. Usually, when you watch movies, you expect to see reasons, character-building, etc. But here, there is no emphasis on such things, and it is more like making scenes funnier and grand. Songs are popping out just for the sake of it. The dream of the leading lady to be a Meraki star is getting presented very lamely. The second half of this movie has this competition between the two men on who will be the best father. The humor is so tiring that one would feel Saloni would be much more comfortable as a single mother. The private detective episode and how the scene where Akhil tries to buy a new phone is getting stretched will make you pluck your hair. The songs are fine, but the placements of most of them are pretty jarring.
On the whole, unfortunately, in terms of quality, Bad Newz does live up to the title of the film. It might look like a movie that is trying to crack the Ayushmann Khurrana zone of socially committed entertainment films. But the end result here is a Kapil Sharma skit version of the concept you saw in the trailer. In fact, there are some sequences where the background score acts like they are showing us a staged show rather than a film with emotions.
On the whole, unfortunately, in terms of quality, Bad Newz does live up to the title of the film.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
