'Ladies Vs Ricky Bahl' (Hindi)
Director: Maneesh Sharma
Cast: Ranveer Singh, Anushka Sharma, Parineeti Chopra
It’s hard to believe there are so many unrelated Sharmas involved in a movie where the lead character’s name changes every few minutes.
We first meet gym instructor Sunny, whose girlfriend Dimple Chadhdha (Parineeti Chopra) is as Delhi girl as Delhi girl gets. Parineeti plays the mule-in-horse-harness beautifully, with perfect timing for her comic interjections. She fits so well into the skin of her character that it’s hard to believe she’s acting.
Sunny (Ranveer Singh) is a letchable munda who gets away with bringing a drunk Dimple back home. Hell, he even gets the gun-wielding dad to loan him a car, and charms the mother by promising to return the vehicle with as little damage as he did her daughter. Somewhere between pitching plans for a nationwide chain of gyms and hinting at a wedding, Sunny manages to pull off his first con.
Next, Deven (Ranveer Singh) zooms in on Raina (Dipannita Sharma), a corporate upstart. A fake Husain painting scandal later, Raina is out to get him and win back her job and reputation. Dipannita looks the part, though her accent may be a tad too Anglicised to be credible.
The third story we hear is that of Saira Rashid (Aditi Sharma), a young widow from Lucknow who fell into a trap laid out by Iqbal Khan (Ranveer Singh). Aditi, who outdid everyone else in Mausam, turns in a natural, contained performance here too.
With his to-die-for physique, Ranveer Singh really only needs to look cool and be the ‘Bloody Kamina’, as the ladies call him. But he brings out the shades in the character of Ricky Bahl – yep, that’s his name.
Ishika Patel aka Ishika Desai (Anushka Sharma) essentially has to remain bubbly throughout, and this she does with élan.
The film may be based on John Tucker Must Die, but it lifts the story out of the high school scenario and makes it a pacy con drama. The only loose end is that it seems implausible that these women should assume the same guy duped them when so little is known about his methodology. For a film that provides a logical explanation for every little possible slip, that niggling oversight stands out.
The ending of a movie like this has to choose between corny and ironic. In Ricky Bahl, it’s salvaged from falling flat by sparkling dialogues and good acting.