Ladies vs Ricky Bahl review: "Fails to recreate Band Baaja magic!!!"

We are now into the final month of 2011 & with just a handful of movies to hit the silver screens before this year is confined to history. As one would vividly recall the biggest surprise of 2010 was the success of "Band Baaja Baaraat", so one can naturally understand the expectations when the same team comes together for "Ladies vs Ricky Bahl". So can they repeat their glorious history???

Nowadays, whenever we open the newspapers there's a plethora of incidents related to conning. Incidentally, Maneesh Sharma has weaved his story based on this very concept. Dimple (Parineeti Chopra), is the reckless daughter of a rich Delhi businessman, who is head over heels for her fitness trainer boyfriend, Sunny (Ranveer Singh). After having gained the confidence of Dimple's parents, Sunny pulls a fast one on them before vanishing for good. His next target was Raina (Dipannita Sharma), a no-nonsense fiercely competitive corporate lady who was duped on the pretext of obtaining M.F Hussain's painting for her boss by posing as an art dealer, Deven. Feeling suspicious, Dimple contacts Raina who is also being contacted by a similar victim, Saira (Aditi Sharma) & realises that they have all been conned by the same person. The girls now hatch a plan to con the seasoned player with the help of Ishika (Anushka Sharma), a smart sales girl. So will the girls have the last laugh???

Though the idea of the story was interesting, I wouldnt term it as original as it seems definitely inspired from the Tamil  flick "Naan Avan Illai".It's always easy when you are a debutant as there is no weight of expectations. But once you shine through in that phase, then things can get a bit too tough to handle as Maneesh would have felt. Maneesh kicks off the first half in a lively manner with much of the credit owing to Parineeti's impressive performance. Even the second con also manages to keep the audience interested but from then on, the film fails to keep up with the tempo. The second half  invariably focuses on the girls trying to get back to him, but it doesnt attract as much attention. Habib Faisal's dialogues are witty while the music by Salim Sulaiman is hip.

 

Rather than the protagonists, the person who impressed me the most was Parineeti Chopra who was brilliant as the demanding yet crazy Dimple. It's mainly due to her, that the first half was so enjoyable not to forget some of her witty one liners in the latter half as well. Ranveer has done a decent job with nothing much to go ga-ga but he does have the knack for being flirtatious while Anushka was impressive as always exuding confidence. As for the rest, both Dipannita & Aditi have done justice to their roles.

Verdict: The initials are bound to be impressive owing to the expectations generated due to the stupendous success of their first film. With an impressive first half coupled with a decent second half, it should do average business in Multiplexes though it wont repeat the success of "Band Baaja Baaraat". In short, you my give it a try if you have time to spare!!!

Rating: 2.5/5

Regards...Ben