Bada Naam Karenge Cast/ Actors: Ritik Ghanshani, Ayesha Kaduskar, Kanwaljit Singh, Alka Amin, Jameel Khan, Deepika Amin, Rajesh Tailang, Anjana Sukhani, Rajesh Jais, Chaitrali Gupte, Gyanendra Tripathi, Priyamvada Kant, Omm Dubey, Saadhika Syal
Bada Naam Karenge Director: Palash Vaswani
Bada Naam Karenge Release Date: February 07, 2025
Bada Naam Karenge Available On: Sony LIV
Bada Naam Karenge Released/ Available In Languages: Hindi
Bada Naam Karenge Number Of Episodes: 9
Bada Naam Karenge Episode Duration: 45 minutes (Approx Each Episode)
Bada Naam Karenge Critic Review:
It’s the 90s world of Rajshri.
A mansion. A joint family. A starchy patriarch/matriarch whose word is writ, everybody else shivers, cowers before the family dictator.
Karan Johar put Amitabh Bachchan in that stern position in K3G and reversed the gender to give Jaya Bachchan the same unbending top place in Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani.
Step into the sprawling mansion of the Rathi parivar in Ratlam where Taoji (Kanwaljit Singh) is the stiff principled head of a large joint family. Like Karan Johar’s joint family in RARKPK, the Rathis too are renowned for their famous mithai. But Taoji’s rules are anything but meetha.
More than four decades ago, there was a film called Ek Hi Bhool (1981). Those same 80s sentiments and ambience may be transplanted into the Rathi mansion and labelled, Ek Hi Jhooth. Taoji can never forgive a lie. His sister (Anjana Sukhani) is still paying the price for having fallen in love with someone outside their community. ‘It wasn’t about the community, it was her lying about it that Taoji cannot forgive,’ is underlined a couple of times. And in that claustrophobically tradition-bound ambience, the family is eternally grateful to Fufaji (Rajesh Tailang) who did them all a big favour by saving their reputation and marrying the tainted sister, now referred to as “Bua”.
Ratlam is where traditions prevail, Janmashtami is a big celebration. Mumbai is where young adults go astray. Nephew Rishabh (Ritik Ghanshani) is Mumbai-returned. So is Surbhi (Ayesha Kaduskar) from Ujjain whose dad (Jameel Khan) is an educationalist, not an industrialist. He is more open minded than the Rathis.
With Sooraj Barjatya as showrunner, director Palash Vaswani goes the whole hog. Karan Johar+Sooraj Barjatya+Ekta Kapoor with flashbacks to Covid times when Surbhi and Rishabh had been unwittingly thrown together and had fallen in love.
So when the blissfully ignorant families bring them together in an arranged match, the couple is in a dilemma. How do they tell their families that they had lied about their time in Mumbai?
Writers S Manasvi and Vidit Tripathi bring in “Our boy is so good, he never touches liquor” with flashbacks to parties where huge liquor bills were run up.
Every joint family must have a chugli master, someone who probes and prods people into a dramatic showdown. Fufaji with his loveless marriage to Buaji, does the honours. Add to it an oily security guard and a nosey neighbour in Rishu’s Mumbai apartment and you know how Fufaji got his hands on hidden info.
Spread over nine leisurely episodes that hark back to Covid times and to the present day when Surbhi and Rishu are in a dilemma, there are upheavals galore amidst Taoji, Taiji (Alka Amin) and their rules. When someone wants to go for Zumba classes, it has to be done on the sly.
Why Surbhi lied to her understanding parents when Covid was a strange phase where one was blessed to have even come out of it unscathed, is convenient writing. Equally convenient is how the same two Covid lovers came together for an arranged meeting where they are so surprised that you wonder if such matches are done without even knowing one another’s names. Given their past (he’d even sneaked into her hostel room and stayed the night), what if they had been thrown together with other people in an arranged match? Would they have continued living with their new partners pretending to be untouched and virginal?
Parampara, neeyat, a familiar moment from past films when the disapproving patriarch suddenly melts and dances with gusto, are all packed in until Rishu finds his tongue. Taoji and Taiji are put on the mat for their hypocrisy, for holding grudges for decades and for their chauvinism.
A happy ending is ensured, typically at the railway station.
The only reason for putting the story into a nutshell is to give the viewer a choice. Do you want to see rigid traditions making room for a modern thought or two?
The performances are uniformly as required by the script. As for music, it is the strains of Sooraj Barjatya’s own chartbusters that fall pleasantly on the ear.
But there are many dramatic twists in the emotional plot.
Bada Naam Karenge– To Watch Or Not?: It is old-fashioned storytelling with a modern ending. Make your choice.
Bada Naam Karenge Review Score Rating: 2.5 out of 5 (i.e. 2.5/5)
Bada Naam Karenge Official Trailer:
Bada naam Karenge Official Trailer (Credits: Sony LIV)
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