Ladies vs Ricky Bahl gets average opening

Ranveer Singh and Anushka Sharma-starrer Ladies vs Ricky Bahl made an average start and the romantic comedy, which got mixed reviews, has earned approximately Rs 16.54 crore in the opening weekend.

Made at a budget of Rs 25 crore, the film collected Rs 4.74 crore Friday, Rs 5.59 crore Saturday and Rs 6.21 crore Sunday.

A conman's story, the film sees Ranveer fooling three girls Aditi Sharma, Dipannita Sharma and Parineeti Chopra, cousin of actress Priyanka Chopra. In the end, he finds his match in Anushka.

Ladies vs Ricky Bahl brought the Band Baaja Baaraat trio of Ranveer, Anushka and director Maneesh Sharma together, but they couldn't repeat the same success story.

While some trade experts say that the film has opened up good, others feel that the Anushka-Ranveer jodi has failed this time.

"The response to the film is average as the occupancy has been 60-70 percent," Yogesh Raizada, corporate head (Cinemas) of Wave Cinemas told IANS.

Puneet Sahay, of Spice Cinemas says that family audiences stayed away as the film targeted the young crowd.

"The occupancy has been around 85 percent in total for all three days and it targets younger crowd. The opening was dull on Friday but later it picked up in the next two days, however, the occupancy dropped again on Monday," he said.

"The film is likely to get affected by the release of Mission Impossible 4: The Ghost Protocol. There is a lot of buzz surrounding the film as it stars Anil Kapoor. However, the performances of all the actors have been good," he added.

Raizada of Waves appreciated Parineeti and said: "She is impressive when it comes to acting."

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Review: Ladies Vs Ricky Bahl

“Sunny had made a clever plan. Daddy, you could’ve been careful too,” explains the Punjabi pampered daughter to her disturbed old father. She says it in a way that only a rich, spoilt girl from a family, which also pretty much cons for a living, could. The girl’s Dimple. Her Papaji, pot-bellied Dilliwallah in the construction line (pun intended), has just been duped by her boyfriend Sunny. To be fair, the boy had laid a decent trap, convincing his girlfriend of being the ousted owner of a bungalow on the posh Barakhamba Road.

The father got the old tenants of that disputed property to clear out. He struck a deal with the boy, who’d sell him the property for a pittance. The boy ran away with the Rs 20 lakh cash advance. Adorably dumb Dimple (Parineeti Chopra; spontaneous, spunky for the part) still says Sunny and her made for a great jodi (pair)! This is when she doesn’t yelp, “lol, lol” I didn’t know that was already a spoken word. It should become, after this film. Okay, most of us won’t say it.

Sunny’s moved on. The film captures his future escapades. He cheats a smart exec (Dipannita Sharma) with a fake Hussain for her new office. He’d already conned a cloth merchant (Aditi Sharma) before, showing her dad, sample of a neat embroidery work. His current score at the game is 30. What’s common between all his victims, they’re all reasonably impressionable women. His research and mode of operation is still hard to figure, besides that he never tries to seem he’s trying too hard. Which is probably true for all conmen.

Three of his preys, the women mentioned above, from completely different backgrounds, having connected with each other somehow, gang up to teach him a lesson, and hopefully get some of their money back. This is a full-on female power flick, in that sense. Hence, Ladies Versus Ricky Bahl. The ladies could have informed the police. But that would alert the conman to go underground. Corporate exec (Deepanita) is the mother hen, they hatch a plot, hire another girl (Anushka Sharma) to dupe the fraudster instead. It’s an endearing twist.

The young Ranveer Singh plays Ricky Bahl, his character’s real name, which we don’t know yet. Given almost all Bollywood leading men now are forced to play proper characters (something they used to back in the 1950s), as against portray merely themselves: a back-story might become slightly necessary. We know nothing about the motivations of this conman, besides what we see: he is single, looks like a loner, is pretty much sexually uninterested in the women he takes for a ride, and is interested in money for money’s sake. Placement of this kind of guy was handled much better in Yashraj’s previous, similar flick, Badmaash Company (2010), which had suffered for completely other reasons.

The set-up here is enjoyable still. You know the payoff will be an issue. The audience gets an excuse to travel across LKO (Lucknow), DEL, BOM, GOA, the hero gets to play the crooks Iqbal, Sunny, Devesh, Diego. While his locations and phones change, his cellphone’s ringtone remains the same. It’s always the filmy dialogue, “Haarke Jeetne Wale Ko Baazigar Kehte Hain.” It helps the girls track him down.

The line of course refers to a flirty, villainous role Shah Rukh Khan had risked with Baazigar (1993). Plenty of heroes have wished to play SRK since. The one here’s no exception.

Opposite Anushka Sharma, he’d made his debut last year with Band Baaja Baraat, which was largely admired for sweetly bringing out the nuances of the real Delhi, along with that super track (Ainvayi Ainvayi), of course. The actor had seemed too desperate (or despo, as Dimple might say) in that picture, as in public life thereafter; it’s always a turn-off.

The two pair up here again. The male character’s obviously kept himself well preserved for the leading lady. You figure they’ll get together, never sure why or how the girl would fall for a confirmed, multi-crore fraudster, who should be in jail. Some more fine-tuning could’ve helped. This is when the commercially inevitable takes precedence over satisfactory explanations.

At worst, the film remains then a yawn inducing, half explained romance; at best, it’s an effortless watch all the way.

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