No dum, no bum

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Desi Boyz has two brawny boys, one with a reputation for insulting and tossing women around till they beg for a horizontal encore, and one with dimpled cheeks, both sides. The film’s “A” certification and promos have been promising a giggly, naughty male striptease.

But that’s not what the film serves up.
Writer-director Rohit Dhawan’s debut film is a pathetic prude. The boys take off their shirts, but not their pants or inhibitions. The film hints that at least one of the boys may have slept for money, but it’s made clear repeatedly that it was for a very sentimental, worthy cause.
There’s no thrill of the flesh here. Indian boys can only be forced to shed and sleep around — because of the recession, to save a child from going to a foster family, to save a marriage and maybe, sometimes, to save certain lonely ladies from sinking into depression.

In London live two desi boys, Jerry Patel (Jignesh to his mummy) and Nick Mathur. Buddies from their college days in India, they share an apartment. Jerry (Akshay Kumar), a college dropout, is a security guard, and Nick (John Abraham), an educated and responsible investment banker. They adore each other and there is enough chemistry between them for you and me to wonder why they don’t just do it and get it over with. They won’t, of course, because they are macho Indian men with families, morals, confused sexuality and would like to continue working in wussy Bollywood.
Anyway. Nick provides for Jerry and Jerry is happy with that. That’s why he is not too thrilled when Nick proposes to Radhika Awasthi (Deepika Padukone) with a $32,000 diamond ring. Radhika says yes, of course.
But it’s 2009 and newspaper headlines are grim — cutbacks, firings, unemployment... So both our studs get fired. Jerry needs to earn to pay tuition fee for little Veer, his orphaned nephew. Nick needs to earn so that he can give Radhika the Valentino gown and posh honeymoon she has been browsing the Net for. But they can’t, not without taking up the offer of the dark lord of the carnal world. This dude has no confusion about why he was put on mother earth – he is here to pleasure women, as they want, when they want, where they want. After some hemming and hawing, Jerry and Nick sign up to become Rocco and Hunter.
Rocco and Hunter dress up as firemen, soldiers, cops, even Yuvraj-Dhoni, and are happy to dance at bachelorette parties. They may even grant the girls one last hurrah before matrimony. But only if the girl is white, blonde and anonymous. In case she is Indian, or, worse, Indian and married, then it’s paap and our boys will leave her not high and very dry. 
This gigolo-giri gets over in a jiffy and the second half of the film is about the boys trying to redeem themselves — Nick by acting cute, apologising, and saying that nothing is greater than loyalty and friendship, and Jerry by educating himself and landing a job. Oh! And in between, while Jerry is studying at Trinity College, Oxford, and no less, his economics professor, Tanya Mehra (Chitrangada), hits on him and does a better striptease than the boys could muster.

Desi Boyz, like most films these days, looks good. It even has funny dialogue full of double entendres. The director uses the standard comic device of getting the actors to talk to us directly to interesting effect. But that’s not how Desi Boyz was sold to us.
Desi Boyz targeted the mature Indian woman (and man), but it underestimates her. There are no dirty scenes, but lots of gyaan about bad things having bad parinaam, and boys’ love for mother, brother, bhanja and desh. 
Desi Boyz could have been exciting, and it often seems that it did intend to. The girls are incidental — to the film and to the boys’ life. They should have been dismissed after one song each, the boys should have had a real relationship and stayed in the business of making women happy. There are gay jokes, and even the gay anthem — “Aadmi hoon aadmi se pyaar karta hoon” — is invoked. Then there’s recession — what better time to picking the pole over Lehman and their brothers. Desi Boyz is almost there. Mild nudging would have gotten the job done. But it withdraws and makes you wonder why it exists. Sanjay Dutt is only the silver lining on this frigid cloud.
Discussing the flaws in Desi Boyz’ direction will take up a full page, so I’ll list the top two: there is a mishmash of Gujarati and Punjabi, and it seems as if England has been colonised by north Indians. Though the Union Jack flutters on every desk and wall, the goras serve desis and Hindi is England’s first language.
Next week is Vidya Balan’s turn to make good on her promise of sleaze. I hope Bollywood girls have more dum in them than the boys.