Geeta Sethi (Tabu), Jasmine Bhajwa (Kareena Kapoor Khan) and Divya Rana (Kriti Sanon) are crew members of the sinking airline Kohinoor. When they realise that its owner Vijay Walia (Saswata Chatterjee) — yes, it is that in your face — is living it up while they remain unpaid for over six months, the three air hostesses get involved in a gold smuggling scheme leading to moral dilemma (mild) and hijinks (many).
On paper, Rajesh Krishnan’s second movie outing (after Lootcase in 2020) is a no-brainer, with star power like Tabu, Kareena and Kriti sharing screen in a mad movie about women who take matters into their own hands and give frivolous rich men a taste of their own medicine. And the film does deliver, on most counts. But the smooth take off is followed by patches of turbulence and a bit of a bumpy landing.
Geeta is a veteran who has dreams of retiring to Goa with her home-chef husband Arun (Kapil Sharma) once she gets her PF money, and Tabu is, as expected, fabulous in the role of a woman torn between what is right and what is her right. Kareena is delightfully catty and glamorous in her role of Jasmine, a mid-career air hostess who is driven by greed and a penchant for the finer things in life. Both play off each other brilliantly — the ageist jokes, like the one about foundation not being able to reduce years, are some of the best. But both seem a little out of their element in the slapstick moments of comedy that ensue in the second half of the film.
Completing the trio is Kriti’s Divya, a newbie who is lying about her job to her very middle-class parents who think the world of her. Kriti shines bright, perhaps because she doesn’t have the baggage (pun not intended) of the other two’s powerhouse star turns in the past. One of the biggest wins of Crew is the camaraderie among the three, very different, women, which never seems forced, whether they are figuring out how to smuggle gold, fighting about right and wrong, planning a heist or generally chilling and having fun.
There are some genuinely funny moments, like one of the trio yelling ‘horn maar’ from the cockpit as they taxi down a bumpy airstrip straight towards a cow, or where the landing of a plane is conveyed through the nodding head of an open-eyed dead body and one wonders why the writers, Nidhi Mehra and Mehul Suri, didn’t have more moments like these built in. It’s the closest Crew comes to Krishnan’s crime comedy debut, Lootcase, in terms of humour. There are some emotional moments too, but it is never overdone by the director who keeps the film cruising as an out-and-out comedy.
One of the notable things about Crew is the fact that despite being a female buddy comedy, it doesn’t make the men insignificant, whether it is Kapil Sharma as the supportive husband, Diljit Dosanjh as the customs officer and Divya’s romantic interest or Rajesh Sharma as the CFO of Kohinoor. Yes, they let the ladies do the leading, but they are not unnoticeable either. It’s a shame that Saswata Chatterjee is not given more to do.
The worst thing about Crew is the blatant product placement, whether GoIbibo or Wow! Momo, which often makes it difficult to follow what is actually going on on screen. Some subtlety, please?
The film gives up any pretence of logic in the second half as the trio plan a heist in a Middle-Eastern country and all you can do is fasten your seat belt and go along for the bumpy ride full of contrivances, divine intervention and bumbling mistakes. Crew, like its climactic heist, isn’t about intelligence or wit, but about honesty — sometimes ‘girls just wanna have fun’ and that’s what makes it worth a ticket to fly.
Welcome aboard Kohinoor 420!
