‘Bad Newz’ movie review: Vicky Kaushal is the spice of this half-baked dramedy

A still from ‘Bad Newz’

After going for the Kill, the Dharma family returns to its bread and butter recipe where producer Karan Johar has mastered the art of pushing the envelope only to take it off fire much before the boiling point. A spiritual successor to Good Newwz (2019), director Anand Tiwari brings Bad Newz with clickbait headlines but little detailing. More like a product from popular Punjabi cinema written for a Hindi-speaking audience, it is the kind of film where the background score makes a screeching entry before the hero arrives. The comedy is centred around heteropaternal superfecundation, a rare condition where two eggs of a female with more than one partner get fertilised by two different sperms in one menstrual cycle.

In Bollywood terms, it is the biological impact of the chemistry that love triangles cause. And Tiwari has tailored it according to the sensitivity of Bollywood behemoths that want their films to taste like a concoction of liberal values and youthful zing but can’t risk the disapproval of conservative family audience.

Saloni Bagga (Triptii Dimri), a young chef aspiring to win a Meraki Star for her restaurant falls in love with a rakish West Delhi boy, Akhil Chaddha (Vicky Kaushal), who runs a popular soya chaap shop. Beneath the flamboyance and magical charm, Akhil is a mamma’s boy whose overprotective and clingy nature comes in the way of Saloni’s rise in her profession. As the two part ways, Saloni shifts to a hotel in Mussoorie where she finds a sedate Punjabi colleague in Gurbir (Ammy Virk), recovering from a broken relationship with a Gujarati girl by opening a restaurant devoted to Gujarati cuisine.

In a rare feat for a Hindi film heroine, Saloni gives in to her hormones only to find that it was not such a wise thing to make new bonds without clearing the emotional clutter of the previous relationship. Somewhere deep beneath the bling and banter, Saloni’s condition is a metaphor for the dilemmas a working woman with well-defined career goals deals with. The fraternal twins developing in her womb are like her career and love. Does one have to feed off the other to survive? Can they coexist?

However, given the way the screenplay is structured and executed, there is hardly any scope for subtlety or attempting to touch upon the mental architecture of today’s girl. It turns Saloni’s relatable condition into a spoof. In the game of the predictable one-upmanship between the two fathers, there is hardly any discussion on her career for which she moved away from Akhil.

Writers Ishita Moitra and Tarun Dudeja are keen on keeping the film featherweight with comic set pieces meant to keep the masses interested. Some of them work well. The insight into elderly people’s engagement with daily soaps and reality shows is spot on. The connection between Gujarati girlfriend and non-vegetarian food rings a bell but the situational humour is neither consistent nor not consistently well etched out. It feels like references from other sources have been cut and pasted without proper context and emotional impact.

It seems the makers want the audience to tune in to Tauba Tauba, the chart-busting item number, after listening to heteropaternal superfecundation and some empty talk on the importance of Meraki Star in a chef’s career. The film sounds like an advertisement for the rating system that evaluates the quality of services provided by businesses. For a film where the three central characters are in the business of food, the ambiance doesn’t match the ambition. It is neither true to Karol Bagh nor ingrained in South Delhi.

After being anointed national crush by social media, Triptii is going through the Bollywood frippery that most female stars go through in the early stages of their careers. She needs to work on her comic timing but every time the emotional pitch rises, one can see she retains the Bulbull in her that made her an actor to watch out for. For a change, the Sikh character is not stereotyped in a Hindi comedy and Ammy Virk impresses as the boy who perhaps puts brain ahead of brawn but the writers haven’t given the chicken-loving character enough meat in the script to chew on.

Vicky Kaushal is the lifeline of the dramedy, keeping it on course even when the humour sags and the drama deflates. His Akhil Chaddha feels like the first cousin of Ranveer Singh’s Rocky in Johar’s universe. If some of the fluidity in his dance steps seeped into the storytelling, Bad Newz would have brought cheer.