‘Bawaal’ Review: Getting Some Perspective

“Bawaal” is a sensationally absurd Bollywood manufacturing that tells a easy ethical story about what it means to be a Real Man. Directed by Nitesh Tiwari (“Dangal”), this globe-trotting romance is, like many Bollywood motion pictures, willfully excessive. But this one’s not very enjoyable.

Ajay (Varun Dhawan), a grade-school historical past instructor, is just desirous about one factor: trying good. Impeccably groomed and chiseled, he doesn’t appear to care that his college students aren’t studying, nor that his spouse, Nisha (Janhvi Kapoor), is desperately sad.

Ajay retains Nisha out of sight and at house together with his mother and father — she has epilepsy, and he fears tarnishing his picture ought to she have a seizure in public. When Ajay is suspended from work for slapping a scholar, he cooks up a scheme to show his pedagogical value. He heads to Europe, the place he delivers video lectures from numerous historic websites to his college students again house in small-town India.

Nisha tags alongside, regardless of Ajay’s protests, and proves herself, too. In Europe, she’s way more succesful — and, in fact, extra stunning — than Ajay had cared to appreciate, whereas he, in sleepy comic-relief segments, suffers by journey’s minor hardships: misplaced baggage, pickpockets and a dastardly trade fee.

Ajay turns into extra compassionate with every leg of the journey. Monochrome fantasy sequences plunge him and Nisha into battle on the shores of Normandy; in one other, they’re victims inside an Auschwitz gasoline chamber. It’s an egregious metaphor for the dire state of their relationship, and one of many movie’s many unearned pivots to excessive drama.

Dhawan (too convincing a narcissist to tug off a change of coronary heart) and Kapoor (devoid of charisma) don’t have chemistry, and also you’re by no means actually rooting for Ajay a lot as you’re hoping Nisha makes a run for it. The movie’s macho, save-the-marriage traditionalism will appear icky to some viewers — particularly as a result of, absent real laughs or stakes, there’s little else to soak up.

Bawaal
Not rated. Running time: 2 hours 17 minutes. Watch on Prime Video.