Bawaal Movie Review — Sucharita Tyagi
With a story credited to Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari, and screenplay dialogue credits shared between Nikhil Mehrotra, Shreyas Jain, Piyush Gupta, and Nitesh Tiwari, in that order, there are a whole bunch of cinema professionals to be blamed for this insensitive max mumbo-jumbo masquerading as a film. Interestingly, Bawaal has a BUNCH in common with the two big releases of the week, a writer-director couple behind this one and Barbie, and both Oppenheimer and this, feature World War 2.
If that is a sentence you weren’t prepared for, same. Varun Dhawan, as Varun Dhawan does, when he’s not doing Bhediya, is Ajju Bhaiyya, bare-chested, big-muscled, misogynistic buffoon coursing through life basis good looks and the fact that everyone will bend over backward to cater to men like him. He is married to Nisha, arranged by their families. Nisha ko epilepsy hai, toh Ajju is like I only married you for the optics, don’t expect me to behave like a husband, or frankly a decent human person.
Toh then kya yeh movie dikhaayegi kaise Ajju realizes how to respect a human with a disability, aur finally aankhein khulengi ki auraton ke liye waise hi duniya 100 guna zyada mushkil hai uske contribution ke bina?
Hang on.
THEN we are shown ki Ajju hawaa-baazi mein hi history ka teacher bann toh gaya tha, lekin aat ause kuch hai nahi. EK din gusse mein kisi politician ke bete ko thappad maar diya, toh ho gaya “bawaal”, and he’s now suspended.
Toh then kya yeh film baat kar rahi hai about India’s dishonest teachers, questionable education in our schools, and how politicians have god-like powers jiska misuse hoga hi hoga?
Hold up.
To PROVE that he can fake it till he makes it, Ajju then decides to go to Europe on his father’s money, to make videos from the sites where….and I can’t believe I’m saying this….World War 2 events occurred, to….win favors with his school’s principal, and the politician I suppose?
Nisha tags along, and as one does in Europe, they both fall in love.
But not before she falls to her knees in a concentration camp.
I’m sorry, main itna plot ko samjhaati nahi hoon reviews mein, par doston I tried, and thought about it a lot, but there is just no way to explain the sheer absurdity of this film, without telling you all the above. Putting the Ba…waa…in Bawaal, the movie changes its own tone about 5 times, but is never clever about it. Manoj Pahwa, who plays Aju’s father, explains in many lengthy exposition voiceovers how loved Ajju is in the community, but when we meet him he clearly resents his son for being a free-loader. Nisha’s epilepsy is also explained in the 4th wall-breaking voiceover, a little detail conveniently forgotten as soon as Ajju sees her in a deep neck, high-slit dress in Europe and his eye pops out of his socket. Then from this 500 days of summer vibe, we move to generic Manyavar ad-looking wedding sequences, to Kabir Singh where the woman, despite her mother telling her to do so, refuses to leave the man who treats her worse than garbage, to an underconfident run of the mill Bollywood comedy with a constant underlay and SFX with more cartoons than characters, as the script gradually makes it way from being a small town rom-com to, sigh, a World War 2 epic.
Oh, the irony of this releasing the same day as Oppenheimer.
By way of Anne Frank’s diary, Ajju explores his personal humanity, as he finds himself thinking of himself and his wife as inmates in a German prison. As Gujarati tourists pass him by, talking among themselves about the garba they plan to do under the Eiffel Tower, because sure people actually do that, Ajju struggles with the exchange rate, entirely unaware of what 40 Euros will be in INR. You’re being told your hero is not just sexist, but he’s clearly also an idiot. As I wondered who I’m supposed to be rooting for, relate with, or sympathize with, I began to see the attempts to recreate a docu-real lifestyle emotional saga. But like Rang De Basanti, this is not.
The constant Gujaratis wearing loud clothes and packing chakli for Europe trips only serves to highlight the laziness of the writing. At one point, in Ajju’s imagination, Nazi soldiers come to arrest him, and he, as Ajju, thinks about how he would run to pack Nisha’s photo in the few minutes given to him to prepare a bag. I understand the thought, when confronted with strife and hardship, most humans tend to think, what would I do if I were in this situation? Except by this time there have been so many missteps, this emotion doesn’t land. It just made me nervous to see all the epiphanies we are being hinted Ajju will have as they slowly make their way from Paris to Auschwitz, and you have to see it to believe what happens there.
The movie is on prime video, watch at home this weekend.
