Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Pallavi Sharda, Jaaved Jaffery, Amitosh Nagpal, Rishi Kapoor, Neetu Singh Kapoor, Himani Shivpuri
Director: Abhinav Kashyap
This is a film which pre-empts us from coming up with the classic line, “haaye, sharam nahin aati hai kya”, because it is called ‘Besharam’. Which then frees it to indulge in every single “shameless” thing a Bollywood flick safely can, presumably because it has an A-list star. This is a film in which the hero is a self-confessed luchcha-lafanga: remember that phrase? The kind of thing that the villain used to do— be an illiterate lout, crack cheap jokes, harass the heroine, and pull at his crotch whenever possible — is now down to our hero. Not discreetly, that would be unbecoming of a ‘besharam,’ but loudly, accompanied by background music, with the kind of exaggeration that doesn’t allow you to look anywhere else.
Orphans and best friends Babli (Ranbir Kapoor) and Titu (Nagpal) make a living by stealing cars. When Babli is not whacking hot wheels, he is line-maaroing Tara (Pallavi Sharda), or stuffing socks in places that need to bulge, to ‘jamaao impression’. Warned you about the crotch aspect, didn’t I? Remember how Abhinav Kashyap had underlined the region below the belt in his debut Dabangg? You couldn’t go from one frame to another without Salman Khan and his cohorts calling attention to their pelvic region, thrusting one way , then the other, over and over and over again. It looks as if Kashyap’s signature move, and this time it is the Kapoor lad who’s thrusting his butt, crack distinctly visible, in our face.
You have to go looking for the plot with a microscope. Babli is given two sets of obstacles to overcome. One is his real-life parents as a reel-cop-couple, Bulbul and Chulbul Chautala (Neetu and Rishi). And the other is a Chandigarh-based baddie (Jaffery), who has a line in stolen cars and cash. The proceedings are interrupted by too many superfluous songs, and repetitive exchanges with a debutant leading lady (Sharada) whose ordinariness seems to be her only discernible quality. The first half goes by reasonably quickly, the second nosedives because by then everything has
