2 stars
Babli Bouncer is the story of a girl from a Haryanvi village which is known for supplying bouncers to nightclubs and pubs in Delhi. It’s love at first sight for Babli who meets Viraj at a wedding in her village. Hoping that he, too, has fallen for her, Babli decides to go off to Delhi to pursue her romance. She uses emotional tactics on her parents and her friend to achieve this but only to end up in a heartbreak situation. Subsequently, her heartache becomes the wake-up call she needed in life, and she sets off to discover her true potential.
Films that belong to this genre have a set pattern and this film also follows the same path, which is sad given that it had a good topic at hand. We have never had a chance to peep into the life of a bouncer. This film filters that further down to the life of a female bouncer which could have been depicted using humour that could camouflage the difficult and sad situations. The film uses humour but remains extremely superficial in its treatment of the subject. Although it opens very interestingly with an action scene, it loses its way into an emotional drama around how a girl makes her way to a big city and how heartbreak serves as her greatest strength to become a successful and revered bouncer in the business.
Madhur Bhandarkar has given gut-wrenching films like Chandni Bar, Page 3 and Fashion. One expects him to create that magic with his experience and his knowledge of the craft. Instead, he gives us a pacy but a very superficial presentation of a female bouncer’s life. The comedy just doesn’t work here, which shows that the writing could have been paid more attention to. The film also has a lot references that remind one of English Vinglish and Queen, which is where originality suffers. The closing shot of the film speaks a lot but it doesn’t have the gravitas because the rest of the film lacks that depth. The secondary characters of the film don’t add much value to the story which is another drawback in the film. Tamannah Bhatia, however, is the star of this product. Although she doesn’t quite look the part, she makes excessive effort to cover up for that. She has picked up the dialect well, she doesn’t go out of character and has presented a good performance despite the limited scope the character offers her here.
All in all, it’s a one-time watch which could have been made infinitely better.
