SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Breakinger A Brilliant Conflict

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Kinley This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Michael Ledo The film is inspired by real events, i.e. there are Indo-Canadian people living in Vancouver and people are being killed. Beeba Boys means "Good Boys" similar in meaning to good fellows. Jeet Jahir (Randeep Hooda) is a gang leader who has made waves by insulting the older Grewal (Gulshan Grover). A man named Nep (Ali Momen) close friend to Grewal's daughter (Gia Sandhu) is a double agent between the gangs and walks a fine line.The gangsters are very family oriented. They seem more intellectual then the common gangster and wear pink and powder puff blue suits with orange turbines, and at other times they look western. The film shows the local prejudice against Indian gangsters. Much of the film was comical and I don't know if it was intentional as I felt I had to laugh at certain cultural aspects such as the mothers of the criminal gangs all work out at the Jewish Center and sauna together.It does have a musical number at a wake, but not exactly a Bollywood production. It was a professional production, just don't know how to digest it.Guide: F-bomb in two languages, implied sex. No nudity.

Jagdeesh Mann Splashy, colourful and loud as a tie-dyed turban, Beeba Boys is an arranged marriage between a Bollywood drama and Reservoir Dogs, with the match made by Tom Ford. Sadly, however, this is not one of those weddings where love blossoms over time and the couple bonds into one happy unit. The film is loosely inspired by the brief life of Vancouver Indo- Canadian gangster Bindy Johal. In filmmaker Deepa Mehta's version, however, the protagonist is an overcooked caricature of Johal's media persona.Jeet Johar, played by Bollywood actor Randeep Hooda, is no longer a street thug trying to secure a piece of the local drug trade – typical of the vast majority of Vancouver's real-life disorganised street level Indo gangsters. This bogeyman is the established head of a sinister group of snazzily-dressed goons whose operation is as well-oiled as their looks. Meet the Beeba Boys (beeba being a maternal term of endearment meaning 'good boy'), with Johar as the established Kingpin don of this Hell's Kitchen.Mehta's Jeet is a homicidal maniac with limited emotional range. He broods, threatens people, broods some more, gets angry and shoots someone, and then broods some more. He is a human automaton – ironically his son in the movie compares him to Megatron – who somehow happens to be the head of a sophisticated drug operation, though we never learn how Jeet becomes the Scarface of Vancouver. We see less of Jeet actually running his business than dressing up to run his business.This flimsy treatment of the protagonist twins poorly with a plot that seems templated, and disjointed in its formulaic shifts. It feels like Mehta is checking boxes trying to get all the ingredients into this recipe: gangster threatening rival, gangster going to jail, gangster in court, gangster courting his moll, all stirred together with a couple of cultural scenes, and voila the soufflé. The pieces do not sum to a whole greater than its parts.Particularly weak is the vapid relationship between Jeet and his love interest, Katja (Sarah Allen). It is the classic trope of the innocent girl falling for the bad boy. But Mehta's treatment is lazy, even hinting at a mild case of Jungle Fever. Chance circumstance tosses Katja within pheromone-sniffing distance of Jeet Johar and suddenly its mating season in Beeba-land. With little else between them, we are expected to invest in their explosive connection. It is the epitome of hyperbole: hyper-masculine Jeet doesn't court women as much as he summons them to his bed. The relationship drags through the movie more as a distraction, eventually sopping with Bollywood-style melodrama to fill the void left by the lack of chemistry.Hooda's searing on-screen presence and his few scenes of emotional authenticity salvage his character but in the end, the screenplay renders him as flat-footed as Katja, without the bounce in his legs to take us anywhere beyond the designer-upholstered basement of his parent's house where he lives and runs his gang of Beeba's. Period pieces and culturally specific underworld movies benefit from narration, take for example City of God (set in Brazil's favelas) or Goodfellas (Italian mafia in NYC). The viewer is given the context to follow the storyline and to know why any of this is worth watching. Utilising this device in Beeba Boys would have helped frame scenes for viewers unfamiliar with Sikh cultural references. A prime example is a macabre wedding sequence featuring a dead groom at the start of the film. There is dancing, singing, and a general big-fat-Indian-wedding celebration centred around a blue-faced corpse. It feels straight from a Tarantino playbook – nobody is alarmed, not even the children when the dead man topples over. Is this the Beeba Boy's way of pouring out a 40-ouncer of malt liquor to mark the death of a comrade or has Mehta planted a hook for a sequel, Beeba Boys II, the zombie thriller? Over her twenty plus years of film-making Deepa Mehta has made a significant contributions to Canadian and South Asian cinema which has firmly embedded her as an icon in the Canadian canon of film. She is as good a filmmaker as any in the South Asian genre. Given the right script, she is capable of producing resonating, finely textured features like Earth.Beeba Boys is her first crack at gangster noir, a rare genre in Canadian cinema. Unfortunately the film resorts to 'gangsta bombast' instead of treating the subject matter with more respect. There is a story worthy of exploring in the life of Vancouver's real life beeba boys who enter the drug trade. They are typically 2nd generation young men from stable middle class families. Many have college educations. Yet they are lost and seem to enter this world seeking direction. Too many – over 150 in the last 20 years – leave it only once they are lost for good. The film provides little insight into why Vancouver should be the grounds for the rise of the Indo-Canadian gangster as opposed to Toronto, New York, or other cities with significant Sikh populations. If religion is the root cause, as Mehta's film seems to suggest at times, it still does not explain the disparity in violence between different population centres.Given its specialised focus, the film will find viewers upon general release, and the trailers will surely create an impression. But like the young Indo-Canadian men who have died in Vancouver's drug trade, Beeba Boys lives too fast to leave much impression.Originally published in South Asian Post (Vancouver)

jasoncermak A solid and menacing performance by Randeep Hooda playing Jeet, and he looks good doing it. Beeba boys has genuine comedic moments that create an interesting juxtaposition with the dark business the characters are involved in; ie. A mafia boss that lives with his parents, complete with air hockey table in the basement. Deepa tries something new and doesn't glorify the violence which is a fine line when it comes to gangster movies. Some great cinematography and shot on location in Vancouver. Paul Gross was a welcome cameo appearance as was David Suzuki. The style the characters exhibit is really exceptional as well, hats off to the costume designers.

Jasrick Johal 1.5/5* or 2.5/10Beeba Boys was my first viewing experience at VIFF this year, and what a disastrous start.I was actually happy thinking I would see a film 3 weeks before its theatrical release, but little did I know. First let me just say as an Indo Canadian who was born and raised in Surrey B.C. a film like Beeba Boys is a complete sham, and disgrace at all levels. I beg the makers of the film to please show me one so called "Indo-Canadian gangster" who sells drugs in a classy three piece suit, like what the heck was that, we are not in the 1950s, and were not Italians.Being a fan of director Deepa Mehta a film like Beeba Boys was very hard to digest, I mean where is the film maker that made films like Water,Fire,Earth, and even Mid-Nights Children. Beeba Boys to put it nicely is a out right horrible film. The film has no coherent story, there is no script, no screenplay at all. What we see is a bunch of Punjab men running around in suits, disgracing the Sikh community, by selling drugs( doing drugs) and shooting people for no apparent reason. The film is so faulty I just don't know where to start. But more on that later.Story wise the film is about Jeet Johar and his Beeba boys, that consists of about 5 other men. The Beeba boys are Indo-Canadian drug dealers based out of Vancouver B.C. These so called gangsters are regarded as "Messiahs" in the lower mainland Sikh community, kids think there are cool, and make these boys there idols because they are still fighting some type of oppression against the dominant European descent community( Like come on seriously, its 2015). The films main crux is about a war between two drug lords Jeet Johar, and Robbie Grewal.As both groups start killing key members of there crew, Grewal Ji sends in his man to infiltrate Johar's Beeba Boys and become a member.The man Grewal sent was named Depu, and what happens once he becomes a Beeba Boy is what forms the main plot of the film.Acting wise there was definitely no outstanding performances, but I mean without a coherent script and characters three actors still did well without any backing. Those being Randeep Hooda, Gulshan Grover, and Warris Ahuwalia.Beeba Boys is a rare film, where there are so many negatives in the film I can't possibly highlight them all but let me get to the main points. First the film has no clear story, and no character development at all. We don't know the reason why these boys are gangsters, why they sell drugs, and we don't know what the reason of the gang war is, people are just shooting each other without reason.The film solely mounts itself on a couple of set pieces, and some dark comedy. BB at one point has so many characters running around without any intro that you just get plain confused and there so many dumb sub plots like the johar white girlfriend scenes.And don't get me started with the films inaccuracies from the clothing, the way the Indo-Canadian's talked etc, like did the director do any proper research. I mean the films ending and climax twists are another level of garbage all together. The film was so torturous at times that during the end reels the film felt like it was going at snails pace.The only minor things I liked about the film was the stereo typical jokes about the Sikh community ( dads a alcoholic,son lives at home, etc) and the film was shot well,with some stylish props, like nice cars etc. Overall Beeba Boys is a film that you should not watch at any cost and believe me you will thank me later. The films so bad it turns into comedy by the end.Its a film Indo-Canadians especially those born and raised in BC wish was never made because its a disgrace. I really wonder what happened to director Deepa Mehta, has she lost her groove, well hopefully not, and Beeba Boys is just a bad nightmare for her. I am going with a extremely nice (most of those stars are for the actors) 1.5/5* or 2.5/10