Never Ending Movie Carnival
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Call Me Bae Review: Ananya slays in style
What: Bae carves a flamboyant trajectory from heiress to hustler to a (s) hero.
Portraying a rich south-Delhi Socialite who is disowned by her husband and family, Ananya Panday’s Bella Chaudhary (short, Bae) navigates plush to penury and discovers her true calling – fearless journalism.
Bella is a jack of many trades. She is quite a polyglot. Married to another business tycoon, Agastya (short, Aggy played by Vihan Samat) who hardly has time for her, Bae is stuck and stifled in her lifeless marriage. An instant fling with her fitness trainer Prince (Varun Sood) and getting caught red-handed lands her in deep trouble – she is ostracized by her friends and family, patronized by her mum (Mini Mathur) and her Samar bhai (Shiv Masand), robbed off from all extravagant privileges and forced to move to Mumbai in search of a new life.
The new lease of life finds Bae in a state of perennial misalignment – the search for a job, a house and the search for peace. She makes new friends who help her descend from the world of reels and settle in the world of real people– a betting-addict, Saira (Muskaan Jafferi), Tammarah her colleague at work (Niharika Lyra Dutt), a conscientious boss, Neel (Gurfateh Peerzada) and also some foes like the snooty, sardonic head of the news channel, Satyajit aka SS (Vir Das) and a powerful businessman Mukul Sawla (Sahil Shroff) masquerading as a feminist icon.
Show-creator Ishita Moitra (Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahaani, Four More Shots Please, Noor) constructs a breezy and refreshing eight-episode narrative laced with fun, romance, drama and thrills and a keen eye in the elitist society, the Gen-Z culture, the Sis-code and MeToo. Her sensibility pierces through the Gen-Z lingo, the X and the Insta pop-culture brimming with hashtags and fashion statements.
Her Bae straddles both the contrasting worlds – the Twitterati and the real world where she embarks on a mission to uncover a trail of sexual abuse. Moitra takes shots at the ostentatious elites but also shades her protagonist with flaws and frailties. Bae is a compulsive shoplifter; she doesn’t feign her feelings. She is front-footed, spirited and brave like her prior ‘Journo’ protagonists.
The topics that Ishita braves in Bae are nothing new, we have seen them all here and there, but Moitra’s story and director Colin De Cunha’s execution strike with a rhythm and converge to a wholesome source material providing entertainment. Although with the recurrent frivolity and light-heartedness, there is an underlying tendency of the show not to be taken seriously. The seriousness of a grim topic like sexual abuse in the entertainment industry stays surface-level.
Call Me Bae – Final Words
Among its triumphs and shortcomings, Ananya emerges as a consistent pivot who slays in style. The actress who hopped Kho Gaye Hum Kahan while portraying Bella, gets beneath her skin – a vulnerable yet spirited, broken but not broken – she navigates the newsrooms of Mumbai, finding beaus, behens and her better-half. Collin is surrounded with some wonderful performers – Muskkan Jafferi tops the list with her confidence closely followed by Niharika and Lisa Mishra.
I go with 4 stars out of 5 for Call me Bae. Produced by Dharmatic entertainment, the web series is streaming on Amazon Prime Video from 6th September 2024.
Ahwaan Padhee, is an IT Techie/Business Consultant by profession and a film critic/cinephile by passion, is also associated with Radio Playback as well, loves writing and conducting movie quizzes. More By Ahwaan Padhee