A movie like bad boy Being made in 2023 would have been just as unwatchable, no matter who made it.
That Rajkumar has Santoshi is almost heartbreaking, Deepa Gahlot sighs.

There is something indescribably sad about a once successful and capable director like Rajkumar Santoshi leaning towards making a film like this bad boy. The film was quite a long time in the making, but not so much that it should look like it belonged to a different time.

It’s the kind of film that starred Govinda and occasionally Mithun Chakraborty – the working-class man who attracts a wealthy woman and goes up against her strict, disapproving father.

The father a bad boy is played by the talented Saswata Chatterjee, a Bengali man in a high government post who believes in “high quality and high standards” in everything – a partially comical character reminiscent of Utpal Dutt in his films.

His daughter Rituparna (Amrin Qureshi) has to obey her father’s wishes, so she dresses modestly Salwar Kameez and gets ‘996 out of 1000’ on any exam, though she’s spotted a few days later in college — which year, which course doesn’t matter.

Like the movie stars of the past, she has no career options.

She must marry a man of her father’s choice. Or, in this case, their own choice; Studies terminated without review.

The ‘boy’ in question, Raghu (Namashi Chakaborty), is the good-for-nothing son of a junk dealer (Rajesh Sharma) who flunked his exam – it doesn’t matter which one, because he’s unlikely to pass a professional college entrance test.

When Raghu sees Rituparna’s picture in the newspaper, he falls in love with her and, like Munnabhai, enlists the help of his friends to get into her college, posing as a student from Barcelona.

Like countless old movies, he saves her from thugs in the college cafeteria and she falls in love with him.

He picks her up pani-puri and bar dates, something her father would never allow, and she’s ready to spend her life with him.

However, the father challenges Raghu to prove his worth by bearing his household’s expenses for a month. If he succeeds, he can marry Rituparna.

The adult daughter has no say in this; the men must decide their fate.

Dragged in from god-knows-what decade, Johny Lever exaggerates like crazy like the black sheep Uncle Poltu with a horrible Bengali accent brought in by the father to get rid of Raghu. You can’t even remember the last time Lever caused laughter on screen.

bad boy is neither funny nor emotional.

The many songs that punctuate the endless film (only 123 minutes but it seems to be a Monday week) are melodic (Himesh Reshammiya) and poorly illustrated.

Even if the main couple had star qualities, they wouldn’t shine in this film with its archaic plot.

So obsolete is it that a chestnut like ‘Uski chhaati pe moong dalunga‘ pop up. When was the last time you heard that?

Mithun Chakraborty stops by to shake a leg with his son, unrecognizable as the once graceful one disco dancer.

The director who started his career with films like Ghayal And GhatakShe has also directed romantic comedies, including the cult comedies Andaz Apna Apnabut a movie like bad boy Being made in 2023 would have been just as unwatchable, no matter who made it. That Santoshi has is almost heartbreaking.

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