Cast: Akshay Kumar, John Abraham, Deepika Padukone, Omi Vaidya, Rajat Barmecha, Danny Anson Jones, Chitrangda Singh, Sanjay Dutt
Language: HindiGenre: Action, Comedy
Release Year: 2011
Producer: Krishika Lulla, Vijay Ahuja
Director: Rohit Dhawan
Music Director: Pritam Chakraborty
Nonsense, besides sex, sells! And two beefy hunks, one in late thirties and the other in mid-forties, ripping their shirts off and showing off their finely waxed chests hardly make for an eye-pleasing sexual content. Not for the male lot this raunchy display of the ageing beefcake, I’m sure, sexual orientations notwithstanding. With sex scratched out, we are left with nonsense, something that director Rohit Dhawan, having inherited a good chunk of genes from his dad David Dhawan, can be veritably relied upon to be at home with.
And home with it Rohit Dhawan indeed is. For he manages a laugh out of situations like John Abraham and Anupam Kher rubbing against each other and looking into each other’s eyes, before the latter declares “Don’t get ambitious”. To Rohit’s credit he wrings out a few comic moments from the otherwise wooden John. Catch John absolutely nonplussed when his fiancé (Deepika Padukone) and her father (Kher) show up at his pad while he’s having a raunchy party with a bunch of eager-to-strip guys and girls.
Where Rohit Dhawan falters is in his bid to squeeze in melodrama where none was needed. The sequences involving Akshay Kumar and his orphaned nephew whose custody the latter is about to lose are aimed at leaving you moist eyed. They don’t. More embarrassing is a scene where a maths professor scoffs Indians as harebrained and Akshay spiels about the contribution of great Indians: from Aryabhatta, the contributor of ‘zero’, to Sabeer Bhatia the cofounder of hotmail. Worse still, Rohit filches an idea from an advertisement and turns it into a full-blown scene when Akshay makes a show of being beaten up by his interviewee to scare away the other contenders for the job. That’s lame! If anything was left, we have Sanjay Dutt who runs a male escort agency Desi Boyz and claims to be the purveyor of happiness to the womankind.
The story of Desi Boyz is pretty slim. Two best friends find themselves scrounging for a decent living in London after being hit by recession. Jobless but not hopeless, they must find something to make ends meet. Nick has a fiancé Radhika (Deepika Padukone) who craves for a perfect wedding while Jerry is trying to come good to gain the custody of the nephew he dotes on. Pushed to the wall, the two become male escorts, which involve stripping for women at bachelorette parties and even fulfilling their fantasies in the bed.
But this job turns their already derailed lives topsy-turvy. So the two Desi Boyz set out to make amends and get their lives back on track.
The movie’s pace is bumpy for the most part of the first half. The second half begins on a promising note with the introduction of Chitrangada Singh as the hot Economics professor who has a crush on her overaged student, Akshay Kumar. Chitrangada doubtlessly looks prettier and hotter than Deepika. There’s a scene where she offers to strip layer by layer for her student Akshay if he answers the economics questions correctly. The scene is almost exploitative, but Chitrangada makes it work. In comparison, Deepika’s character is reduced to looking sulky. Akshay Kumar and John Abraham are the two lifelines of Desi Boyz and they just about deliver the goods.
The film’s music by Pritam is below par. Cinematographer Natarajan Subhramaniam cans a few interesting shots, particularly one where Akshay and John are shown sitting on the ledge of their penthouse. In the dialogue department, Milap Zaveri comes up with some lines that leave you grinning.
All in all, Desi Boyz is a film that’s not a laugh riot but just about a tolerable one-time watch. Its humour may be irreverent, facetious and even crass, but it works at times.
Rating: 2.5 stars out of 5
