MUMBAI: Is there nothing Himesh Reshammiya can't do? We've always loved his music, and his idiosyncratic crooning has more than its fair share of admirers, but with Badass Ravi Kumar, he finally proves his film detractors wrong, with a performance, script, and presentation that not only plays to his each and every strength, but also a movie that gets the finer points bang on of what it means to spoof something you admire as a homage as opposed to crossing that proverbial line, which contorts a spoofing into derision.
From larger-than-life, lurid villains, femme fatales oozing with sex appeal, celestial damsels in distress, and comical sidekicks to surreal stunts straight out of bizarro land, tacky yet captivating set pieces, peppy music, a sprawling climatic musical flourish, punchlines that fly thick and fast, and a game hero willing to lay it all out there as he plays to the gallery with fire and brimstone — the Badass Ravi Kumar film is for the masses who loved older, glorious Hindi movies of Manmohan Desai, Prakash Mehra, and Nasir Hussain (the kind only Rohit Shetty dabbles in nowadays with success while the South has continued the tradition with aplomb), willingly suspending disbelief for balls-to-the-wall entertainment.
It's so much more though as Badass Ravi Kumar takes all the aforementioned, mixes them together in a melting pot of masala entertainment, and delivers a heady concoction, wherein everything that was an adored stable of 70s and 80s Hindi movies is turned on its head, suspending not only disbelief, but also every ounce of logic, but ensuring that you gladly buckle up for the ride and never question what's transpiring on screen.
The best thing about Badass Ravi Kumar is that it never takes itself seriously, knowing full well what it promises, why you're there, and delivers on that promise in dollops. The dialogues and drama both have an undercurrent of tongue-firmly-in-cheek humor and you guffaw at every serious note not because you're laughing at the proceedings, but because you're laughing with it. The other great thing about the movie is that Himesh Reshammiya embraces his limitations as an actor, finds a note in his performances that simultaneously dramatic yet funny, and never lets go of it to the very end.
Add the rest of the cast, shrewdly filled with better actors, all of whom play along with him with conviction, coupled with a killer soundtrack, and songs, while not the musical maestro's best, but still good enough, and you have a film who's charm is virtually impossible to resist. Sure, the bizarreness of the humor could have been driven even further up, and the second half could've been slightly trimmed, but when we get a spoof like Badass Ravi Kumar in the mold of Hollywood's Airplane and Scary Movie franchise, we'll lap it up with open arms.
4/5 stars
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