Bawaal review – redemption romcom in spectacularly poor taste
While the premise – an awful man learns from his much better wife – is serviceable, the plot, centring on a tour around second world war sites is woefully misjudged
Much of this almost wondrously misjudged Bollywood film is perfectly palatable: the tale of a limited man redeemed by his far superior wife. Varun Dhawan plays Ajay, a history teacher who is fixated on projecting the impression that he is a tough cookie with a perfect life. His pupils are in his thrall, and allow him to doss in lessons rather than teach them; everyone in his city (Lucknow in northern India) seems to have bought into the myth, too. One person who hasn’t, however, is his new wife Nisha (Janhvi Kapoor), whom Ajay resents because she has epilepsy.
When Ajay loses his cool at school one day, he slaps a pupil, unaware that the whippersnapper is the son of a legislator. Ajay had been due to teach his class about the second world war, but with his job in jeopardy, he decides to visit Europe and send his pupils videos of himself giving history lessons in key places where the war unfolded. He initially tries to force Nisha to stay behind – naturally, he doesn’t like her leaving the house because he’s scared she will have a seizure and embarrass him – but she comes along anyway and slowly they fall in love.
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