Critics rating : 3 Stars

Cast :  Kartik Aaryan, Nushrat Bharucha, Sonalli Sehgall, Ishita Sharma, Omkar Kapoor, Sunny Singh.

Direction : Luv Ranjan

Produced : Abhishek Pathak 

Written : Rahul Mody, Tarun Jain & Luv Ranjan 

Genre : Comedy.

Duration : 136 Mins

And the punches begin!

Fans of the earlier instalment will know that unabashed lady-bashing shall follow. Accusations of misogyny will fly thick from certain quarters but the film does what few manage to do for most part – remain consistently entertaining. It is this facet that can excuse the inconsistency in certain characters.

The template remains the same from the earlier film – three roommates living in a spacious Delhi apartment and doing well for themselves. This is despite the bickering in the beginning over how Tarun/Thakur (Omkar Kapoor) is the most well-off of the lot. Set the same story in Mumbai and girls would be the least of their troubles.

Completing the goofy trio are Anshul/Gogo (Kartik Aaryan) and Siddharth/Chauka (Sunny Singh), who are perennially sparring but the matters are trivial and it is all in good humour. The three boys meet three different girls around the same time. Gogo hooks up with the air-headed Ruchika/Chiku (Nusrat Bharucha), Chauka dances to “Didi tera devar deewana” with Supriya (Sonnalli Seygall) at a Meerut wedding and Thakur eyes Kusum (Ishita Raj) at the gym. The lattermost scene is a little too predatory and voyeuristic on the lady’s derriere to look romantic or funny, but wait until you see the scene where they strip-tease for each other on their first date. They use music cassettes as background score during their erotic swivelling. Cassettes!

Gogo and Chiku’s courtship is predictably the first to go south. High maintenance gal and spineless lad? Grab some popcorn.

Sid and Supriya hit it off but her reluctance to break the news to her parents ought to have triggered some alarm bells. What should have sent them blaring was when her parents make the tech-savvy Sid create a matrimonial account for her. Despite a bitter break-up, he sleeps with her (bad move, bro).
Thakur and his “Thakurain” have their own monetary disagreements. Why does Kusum, who seems hell-bent on going dutch suddenly emerge as someone with a gold-digging streak? It seems contrary to her character.

The sequel features four of the six actors from the key cast and shuffles the characterisation of the women from the earlier film. We still get the shrill tantrum-thrower, the girl who keeps the boyfriend hanging and the brat. There is also a trip to Krabi, Thailand (how do the characters afford it?), much like the Goa trip in the earlier story. Most memorably, we get a longer monologue from Kartik Aaryan ranting about iniquities women heap upon men.

Yet somehow the sequences do not feel recycled but possess a freshness of their own. Despite the repetitive loop of angry texts and the boys going to pacify their respective girlfriends, there are winning moments like the interval point scene where they all issue a relationship warning which parodies the anti-smoking adverts.

The humour targets the ditzy girlfriends (but hey, they let the girls walk all over them initially) but is oodles of fun. The singles can sigh with relief while witnessing the petty squabbles while couples can chuckle over the follies of the fools who rush in.