Tag Archives: Heropanti 2

Worst Bollywood Movies of 2022

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While plenty of the Hindi films that I reviewed in 2022 could be described as bland but inoffensive, there were still enough stinkers to warrant making a list of the biggest duds. Without further ado, here are my eight Worst Bollywood Movies of 2022.

Ram Setu makes the cut as an example of what happens to a potentially good film when you target it for the lowest common denominator. There’s lots of evidence that writer-director Abhishek Sharma knows what a better version of his Akshay Kumar adventure flick would have looked like, but Sharma takes the easy way out to avoid hassle.

Plan A Plan B and Cobalt Blue both suffer from awkward dialogue delivered poorly. The juvenile sex jokes of Plan A Plan B sound like they were from the screenplay’s first draft, while Cobalt Blue‘s characters speak as though they are reading lines from the novel from which the film was adapted.

I’m a little conflicted about putting Heropanti 2 on this list because it is 100% the most fun Hindi film of last year, but it’s also a complete mess. The plot makes no sense and neither do the characters, yet it’s a raucous and silly good time. I’ve re-watched the scene where Tara Sutaria shatters a mostly full bottle of Champagne by tossing it onto the ground rather than setting it on a table like a normal person god knows how many times.

Govinda Naam Mera is what happens when twists and attempts at audience misdirection go out of control, resulting in a muddled story populated by inscrutable characters.

The dingy thriller Cuttputlli winds up on the list for fetishizing violence against women and for being hypocritical about police brutality, which is only bad until the hero of the story wants revenge on a suspect. Then it’s okay. Also, 54-year-old Akshay Kumar plays a character who’s supposed to be 36.

Double XL is easily the biggest disappointment on the list (no pun intended). I had high hopes for this comedy starring Huma Qureshi and Sonakshi Sinha as a pair of women who overcome weight prejudice to pursue their dreams, but the screenplay feels like a rough draft that offers little insight about an important subject.

By the time the credits rolled on the final film on this list, I knew it was going to be my worst movie of the year. I had trouble imagining any other film that could come from such a morally corrupt place, and thankfully I was correct. My Worst Bollywood Movie of 2022 is Hurdang.

Hurdang stars Sunny Kaushal as a violent, privileged cheater whom the film positions as a poster-child victim of an affirmative action policy that seeks to redress caste discrimination. The movie contends that because some students might have to alter their paths to stable, desirable middle-class government jobs, it’s better to perpetuate a discriminatory system. In Hurdang, there’s no contradiction between the meritocracy that the film contends exists and a hero who steals exam answers. It’s a garbage movie that’s truly the worst of the worst of 2022.

Kathy’s Worst Bollywood Movies of 2022

  1. Hurdang – stream on Netflix
  2. Double XL – stream on Netflix
  3. Cuttputlli – stream on Hulu
  4. Govinda Naam Mera – stream on Hulu
  5. Heropanti 2 – stream on Amazon Prime
  6. Cobalt Blue – stream on Netflix
  7. Plan A Plan B – stream on Netflix
  8. Ram Setu – stream on Amazon Prime

Previous Worst Movies Lists

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Movie Review: Heropanti 2 (2022)

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Entertainment Factor: 3.5 Stars (out of 4)
Quality Factor: 1 Star

Watch Heropanti 2 on Amazon Prime

This review is a tribute to Dr. Julia Bulgaria, the star of Heropanti 2. She’s a veterinarian who wears a sash that reads “Prom Queen” over her cleavage-baring lab coat. She utters the line, “There’s a zombie party down the road,” with a straight face. Her name is DR. JULIA BULGARIA!

Heropanti 2 — which has nothing to do with the original Heropanti from 2014 — is an objectively bad movie. But Dr. Julia Bulgaria (Amber Doig-Thorne), flamboyant feather jackets, and Tara Sutaria’s casual champagne-tossing all play their part in making Heropanti 2 so bad it’s good.

Even before my new hero Dr. Bulgaria appears, the movie gives plenty of warning that it exists in a parallel universe where normal rules do not apply. The story opens with the villain Laila (Nawazuddin Siddiqui, whose commitment to his bonkers performance is unimpeachable) interrupting a magic show that he is performing in order to meet with his crew of henchmen. Laila’s plan is to steal all the money from every bank account in India on Tax Day. Laila stabs a guy to death while wearing a suit jacket with feathers on the shoulders and a bedazzled eagle on the back. Lesson? Don’t mess with a guy with such outrageous fashion sense.

Cut to Tiger Shroff, who plays a nerd named RJ. He wears glasses and suspenders and rides a bicycle throughout the Yorkshire town where he lives.

By this point, if you think this movie is not for you, cut your losses and move on. It’s doesn’t get any better.

RJ runs into Inaaya (Tara Sutaria) — England’s youngest self-made billionaire. How’d she get rich? “By making a game.” Inaaya thinks RJ is her ex-boyfriend Babloo, who ran off more than a year ago. And wouldn’t you know it, she’s right! “RJ” is really Babloo: a genius hacker who’s been in hiding after double-crossing Laila — who is Inaaya’s brother!!

With Babloo’s cover blown, Laila’s men track him down. Cue the acrobatic fight sequences — the whole reason anyone watches a Tiger Shroff movie. Babloo flips over cars and swings around poles, with the occasional assist from Inaaya.

During a pause in the fighting, Inaaya does something inexplicable and hilarious. She seductively offers Babloo a glass of champagne, pours a glass for herself, then — instead of setting the bottle down on the table behind her — casually tosses the bottle to the side as if she was tossing her jacket onto a chair. Off camera, we hear the sound of glass breaking. Now there is broken glass and champagne all over the floor! Why did she think that was a good idea? Such reckless insanity makes me love Inaaya — though not as much as I love Dr. Julia Bulgaria.

The sexy veterinarian enters the picture when Babloo and Inaaya flee to the countryside in search of a doctor to remove a bullet from Babloo’s behind. Babloo’s butt is so muscular that bullets cause only minor damage to it, allowing him to dance at the aforementioned “zombie party down the road” immediately after surgery. Dr. Bulgaria’s high level of skill also plays a part, no doubt.

For all its faults, Heropanti 2 pulls out all — well, most — of the stops to make its action sequences and dance numbers visually interesting. Not that they’re all good, but they are made with good-faith attempts at grandness. Tiger Shroff is a very good dancer, and Tara Sutaria is even better, so their performances hit the mark. A. R. Rahman’s soundtrack is inconsistent, with catchy tunes like “Miss Hairan” and boring slogs like “Dafa Kar” (the zombie party song).

Nothing about the story makes a lick of sense, and a plot structure that bounces around in time doesn’t help. Yet everything is so over-the-top silly that inconsistency doesn’t really matter. If whatever the hell it is that Heropanti 2 is doing works for you, you’ll have a great time. I did.

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