Badlapur Boys

For records here is another remake of a South film VENNILA KABADI KUZHU (Tamil – 2009), but thankfully not the usual mix of crime-action-drama- love breaking the boring set routine. Its basically a sports film revolving around KABADDI, a lesser explored Indian sport on the silver screen, that now gains some substantial ground in the media due to many recent big events and competitions involving the big stars. Perhaps we desperately need these stars only to promote anything in our country pointing towards a questionable blind following seen in the present times.

Anyway, talking about the star-less BADLAPUR BOYS focusing on our traditional sport hugely famous in the rural regions, I wish it was a more quality affair supported by the big names. Since the film is in fact a well intentioned attempt to present KABADDI in a more entertaining and educative manner before the audience explaining its basic rules too quite interestingly. But on the other hand, an uninspiring execution, all amateur new faces, their mediocre acting and the avoidable insertion of an elaborate romantic angle ruins the novel subject after a fine start and we get to see a lesser engaging film than expected with only few good scenes related with the exciting sport towards the end.

In reality, a sports film always has a disadvantage of being a predictable fare and thus needs to be written with some surprisingly novel sub-plots to keep the viewers glued to the narration as an essential feature. Now where BADLAPUR BOYS does come up with an interesting story-base revolving around a team of underdogs with an unexpected twist, it sadly fails to execute it well focusing on a single character and delivers only few engaging moments in its final 30 minutes when the team is playing the State tournament.

All the new faces try their best to put up a good show along with Anu Kapoor trying hard to impress as their honest coach giving the film its much required support. The cinematography really captures the game movements well but the background music remains uneven scoring mostly in the second hour. Musically the film has a well made title song (catching your attention right away) and few average romantic tracks too with an old-school picturisation featuring many back-up dancers in traditional dresses. But the writing remains the biggest flaw of BADLAPUR BOYS with many clichéd sequences, comical villains, not so impressive dialogues and an unconvincing (or rather illogical) tragic end unable to move the viewers emotionally.

In all, one cannot just ridicule the film due to the tacky making as it does remain one of the few movies enlightening the viewers about our traditional sport in a fine manner. Hence I would simply like to call it a pretty weak but well intentioned attempt to make an Indian sport film on Kabaddi, which could have been much better.

Director Mr. Shailesh Verma fails to return the lost glory of this game. He is so desperate to make this film extraordinary that he has stuffed it with unnecessary shots, jerky expressions and unwanted sub plots. He has written the film too, so he has to be blamed. Major drawback of this film is that you didn't get any excitement while watching the game on screen. This is mainly due to bad camera angles and wrong and repetitive taking. Points are being increased in game but you won't be able to get why? Film based on sports need special shot division to make the soul alive but here makers thought that only keeping the game in script will make it interesting. Even, writing wise you feel that Kabaddi is forcefully incorporated. They don't have to explore or justify this game much so they kept a love angle which becomes triangle at a point. Complete film is in bits and pieces. Make up is also bad. They think that ageing only makes hair grey but skin texture remains same. Clothes do not go well with the characters economical status. Most of the time they look very fresh as if they are being used first time. Production value is very low. They had budget to create a Mela but required gathering was missing. You can feel the scarcity of crowd even in stadium scenes. Climax is good but again it losses it charm due to length. I am giving one more point only due to climax. Scenes are sometimes undercooked sometime overcooked. Performance wise, Annu Kapoor is a fine actor and he did impressive work in his limited scope. Main lead Nishan as Vijay look endearing and never goes overboard. Surprisingly #NitinJadhav as Khaleefa, the short guy in team is very good. He did well in comedy scenes as well in emotional one. Rest cast are just OK. Music is OK. Title track is good and supports the film well by pacing it up.