Pritam And Pedro Review Arshad Warsi Show Remains Lackluster Despite A Munna Bhai Reunion

Pritam and Pedro review: Pedro is the kind of go-get-’em cop whose worst nightmare is to be banished to the cyber crime cell. Pritam is a whizz at cracking codes, when not taking care of his elderly dadaji. When the former’s worst fears come true, the latter becomes his go-to support, and off this boomer uncle-Gen Z duo go solving crimes in sunny Goa.

The six-episode show, Rajkumar Hirani’s first OTT outing, has old hand Arshad Warsi teaming up with newbie Vir Hirani, who has had experience in being in his dad’s productions: the two posed with each other in Munnabhai MBBS. Here, they make up two unlikely halves in a buddy caper, one being at sea upon encountering a keyboard (why QWERTY not ABCDE), and the other selling vacuum cleaners when not busy sleuthing. Why vacuum cleaners? No one tells us. It’s Goa, anything goes, better not to ask.

You have to employ this same sentiment through the show, which tries to be both funnier and darker than it turns out to be. After cracking the dead easy who-stole-the-ATM-machine — a bunch of layabouts being the inept criminals — Pedro and Pritam find themselves up against a much tougher case: the young son of a blustering minister (Satyadeep Mishra) has been kidnapped, but complications arise even as a ransom is raised, and things get murkier. Who’s behind it? Is there only one, or are there two kidnappers? Is the minister’s wife (Shruti Marathe) protesting too much?

If you look at Pritam and Pedro as operating within the cosy crime thriller genre, then it fits right within the Raju Hirani universe in which the baddies come with sad backstories and mitigating circumstances. The director who has given us good-at-heart mobsters, stone-hearted doctors and greedy bankers, doesn’t believe in pure monsters, and that is the USP of his films.

Now Avinash Arun, on the other hand, is aces at creating atmosphere and unmitigated evil, along with human drama (remember Pataal Lok, School of Lies). Whatever else Arun can do, the one thing I’ve never witnessed in his work, which includes Killa and Three Of Us, is blandness. In this one, the emotion is undercut by lax bits, and a handful of underwritten characters.

Take, for example, the dodgy guy hiding out in a beach house: he looks very much as if belongs to the Goan landscape, swigging beer by the beach, and buying his booze at a local hooch-shop, but is wholly unsuccessfully at menace. That comes from a mysterious guy (Vikrant Massey) in a hoodie, who hangs out in a high-tech den, surrounded by screens and scrolls.

We also get to spend a bit of tepid time with a few other characters. Pedro’s senior (Rajesh Gupta) keeps trying to save him from a top-cop’s wrath; Pritam’s dadaji (Vinod Nagpal, last seen in Main Vaapas Aaunga) is devastated at the loss of a two-in-one which housed the voice of his beloved deceased wife; and Pedro’s own musical wife (Mona Singh, criminally wasted in a tiny part) struggling with a painful past.

Munna Bhai, aka Sanjay Dutt, shows up for a supportive blink-and-miss, as does a famous cricketer. And some amount of fun is had by Warsi doing the kind of man who works best on his feet, but hates being tied down to his desk: this is an actor whom I enjoy watching, even when he is made to be too much of a tech-challenged ignoramus here than is believable. As for Vir as the computer geek hiding a dark secret: we don’t miss him when he’s off the screen.

You know the password no one can crack, says Pedro solemnly. What, asks Pritam, equally seriously. 12345, says the former. That’s called not trying too hard at all. Which is what I can say for the entire show.

Pritam and Pedro cast: Arshad Warsi, Vir Hirani, Vikrant Massey, Satyadeep Misra, Naina Sareen, Shruti Marathe, Vinod Nagpal, Mona Singh, Rajesh Sharma, Ajay Madhok, Boman Irani Pritam and Pedro director: Avinash Arun Pritam and Pedro rating: 2 stars