Badmaash Company - Movie Review

Watched Badmaash Company on video. It is the story of a guy who tops everything - studies, sports, women, luck, dumbness - and his friends. Just in case you don't get it they actually start a company called Friends and Co. Now these guys are from Mumbai where everyone (specially in the movies) seems to have a hardworking father who is old enough to be their grandad (remember Sunny Deol's father in Arjun, well Shahid's father here is Anupam Kher who was a grandad in Saaransh). Anyway Mr. Young, Intelligent and Talented wants to make some quick buck so he chooses the smartest way to do it which is - smuggle foreign currency in socks and underwear to Bangkok! Friends and company (includes drunkard Chang who is perpetually made fun of because he is a chini and another chap who wants to be a hero) find a new, glamourous addition to their company in Anushka Sharma (forget her movie name). Why is she going to Bangkok? God knows why but most likely she also wants to make money. Only thing interesting about her is that she carries a pair of scissors which we realise she uses to deadly effect by plunging into the thigh of the nearest male who makes a pass at her.

After some small time jobs, father falls ill and Mom sells bangles. Son gets mad and his razor sharp mind gets a brain wave. Import foreign shoes, evade customs through a dumb scheme of getting all left shoes in one and all right shoes in one consignment (jhute aise cheez hain jise do rehne se full value milta hain nahin to zero darlings) and make money on the evaded customs. To me the scheme looked pretty dumb. For one you paid the supplier the money, then you transport the stuff, get it together from two corners of the country, repack the entire consignment and then sell it to a smuggler. If they did the math right they might have made a loss especially since they all went to Bangkok to meet the Reebok suppliers. But they end up with a profit of 10 lakhs, God knows how, unless they defaulted on payments to uncle from whom they got loan, or to supplier. But no body is doing the math since it is all unaccounted anyway and they go away singing songs. To me it did not look like a great scheme - for the risk they were taking they could very well smuggle the whole thing and make more money. But for some reason the film maker thinks its a great idea and drills it into our head a million times just in case we don't get it. Also that Shahid is an intelligent mind.

Anyway nothing much happens for a while except serial disguise changing (they could have earned more money as disguise masters also), and left consignment and right consignment. Then liberalisation happens and customs goes low and their left right business goes out. In between Anushka and Shahid move in together after the mandatory ghar se nika jao scene from Kher saab and become an item. Next we move to America where uncle ji is waiting to give them guarantees and loans I guess because the moment they get off the plane they find people who buy million dollars worth of gloves from them - get it - left and right again. So this guy Charlie buys a million dollar consignment, gets only one side of the deal while these con men run away, sells it off at a low price to a chinky looking guy who deals in scrap, and then another Indian comes and sells the same consignment in full to the same guy - Charlie. Man, I could not get over that. Though, our stars make fun of all foreigners throughout the movie with liberal use of chal, chal chini or yeh gore log kind of derogatory stuff (and we'd get mighty offended if someone made fun of an Indian in a Hollywood movie - I am sure the Ministry would seek a ban and an apology from the makers if a Hollywood movie said something like these Indians are real dumb). Anyway Charlie lives up to that and buys it at a higher price!!!

If you thought that was dumb you must meet a bank manager who lends out housing loans on the same house he has financed at double the value to four different buyers (he has been taken care of, guys behind a closed door). Well, all we do is get a loan form the bank, make money on each sale and leave the bank and the manager with the house. Simple huh! Only Mr. Intelligent can think of that. To cut a long story short they make lots of money and they all fight and they all split up. Mr. Intelligent suddenly finds himself lonely and calls home and cries into the phone (why a pay phone?). Cops catch him - wonder why they took so long and he is in jail for a few months. He comes out, turns over a new leaf, irons clothes in his uncle's garment business and is lonely and repentant when uncle's business gets a severe hit. An entire consignment of shirts get rejected! And because of one consignment being rejected the company's share price is down 30%!!

Any word consignment requires Mr. Intelligent around. He walks in and saves the day by simply washing seven shirts. Each wash changes colour and by the seventh, its almost white. A new technology chaps where a person can wear a shirt for seven times and after that wear it as a white shirt. All buyers buy it instantly by placing massive orders of course (yeh gore log!) and then some super intelligent stuff happens which we don't understand like they go and buy all checked shirts in the market and then make Michael Jackson wear the shirt (don't ask how?) so that everyone in America buys that same shirt and the company shares increase. Haha, meanwhile we are buying up the company shares also pal!! So by the end of the day we are all rich legitimately except that we don't know why MJ would wear the shirt because his lead dancer is sleeping with one of these guys. If they had such access to MJ they could have made their money easier I guess.

Anyway, all's well and that ends well with even Kher saab coming over to America to visit his son who has a mansion like the playboy mansion now. One notable feature of the second half is the tummy that a pregnant Anushka sports - it's like nothing I have seen before. Last notable pregnant tummy I saw was Priety Zinta's in Salaal Namaste, a highly notable film, in which she looks like she is going to deliver about fifty babies any moment.

Anyway, if you have an intelligent mind, use it well and you could become rich is the moral of the story. Or, that's what I figured out.