Abhimanyu Dassani, Shilpa Shetty, Shirley Setia, Abhimanyu Singh, Sameer Soni, and Vikram Gokhale star in the film Nikamma.
Sabbir Khan is the director of the film Nikamma.
Nikamma has a half-star rating.
Who among us believes we will be in 2022? Not the makers of ‘Nikamma,’ a remake of Telugu hit ‘Middle Class Abbayi,’ because they have produced a film that would have been roundly rejected even in the 1980s.
Jobless Adi (Abhimanyu Dassani) is another version of your typical Bollywood hero. A brat made famous by his adoring family, which includes a big brother (Sameer Soni) and an apparently strict sister-in-law (Shilpa Shetty). But we all know that Adi is just biding his time until he can show his true colours.
Meanwhile, there’s the obligatory cute moment with a college girl (Shirley Setia), who is never seen inside a classroom. The heroine would have been seen carrying at least one book back in the day. There is only evidence of hair and make-up in this location.
This is also supposed to be Shilpa Shetty’s comeback film, so we get two heroes for the price of one. Shetty plays a government officer in a small town who is pitted against the local bad guy (Abhimanyu Singh), who lives in a palace and is constantly surrounded by a posse of scowling goons.
So there you have it: Adi and his’maa samaan’ Bhabhi versus the Very Bad Guy. Set pieces include bike chases, fight scenes, bloody limbs, and one man facing off against all comers. And just to make sure they’re not forgotten, a couple of songs and dances.
There isn’t a single scene in this movie that we haven’t seen a million times before. Unless you count Ms Shetty’s attempt to be a badass. Or perhaps that’s what the filmmakers believe. Abhimanyu Dasani plays another version of Salman Khan, who played a similar brattish hero in his mother’s 1989 debut, ‘Maine Pyar Kiya.’ All that’s missing is a shirtless scene.
‘Nikamma’ is a torturous 2.5 hours of wondering about Bollywood’s future. If this is what we get in the name of a new film starring a new hero who has shown promise in his first two outings, it’s time to go home.