Reliance Entertainment and Movie Temple’s Besharam (UA) is the story of a car thief. Babli (Ranbir Kapoor) is an orphan who steals cars for a living and for running the orphanage he has grown up in. He falls head over heels in love with Tara (Pallavi Sharda), a smart, office-going girl. Tara has just recently bought a swanky imported car. Without knowing that it is Tara’s car, Babli steals it and sells it off to Bheem Singh Chandel (Jaaved Jaaferi) who has appointed him to steal cars for his illegal activities.
Soon, Babli realises that he had inadvertently stolen the car of the very girl he loves. Seeing her distraught, he decides to get back the car for her. Since he knows that the stolen car is in Chandigarh,  he asks Tara to accompany him there. Very reluctantly, Tara, who, incidentally, hates him, goes to Chandigarh with him. With some difficulty, he steals the car back from Bheem Singh. In the car is a bag full of cash, belonging to Bheem Singh Chandel. Police officers Chulbul Chautala (Rishi Kapoor) and his wife, Bulbul Chautala (Neetu Singh), are hot on Babli’s trail for stealing Bheem Singh’s car and they ultimately manage to arrest him and put him behind bars.
Tara is devastated. She has started loving Babli despite his shortcomings. She bribes the ever-willing Bulbul Chautala by giving her the bag with crores of rupees. Tara thereby secures Babli’s release from prison. When Bheem Singh realises that Babli and Tara have stolen his bag too, he strikes at the orphanage and kidnaps all the kids from there. They also take Babli’s bosom pal, Titu (Amitosh Nagpal), and beat him black and blue to get him to spill the beans about Babli’s whereabouts so that he can get back his cash. Babli and Tara are left with no option but to get the bag with the cash back from Chulbul and Bulbul’s house so that the same can be returned to Bheem Singh and the kids released from his captivity.
Do Babli and Tara manage to get their hands on the cash lying in the house of none other than the two police officers? Or do the two police officers prove too smart for them? Is Babli able to save his friends from the orphanage? What happens to Bheem Singh? What happens to the cash ultimately? Does Tara get her car back or does she have to give it up? And what happens to Babli and Tara’s love story?
 Abhinav Singh Kashyap and Rajeev Barnwal have penned a script which relies rather heavily on comic gags and incidents to create mirth. No harm in that but the problem is that many of the light incidents and scenes fail to evoke laughter. Of course, there are some which are truly funny and do make the audience laugh but they are not enough. Perhaps, even more unfortunate than this is the lack of any novelty whatsoever in the script. The routine story and screenplay hardly befit the large canvas of the film and the larger-than-life image of the superstar, Ranbir Kapoor. Besides, the story moves ahead at such a leisurely pace that it gives the audience time to think, prompting them to question some of the twists and turns in the drama. For instance, why does Babli insist on Tara accompanying him to Chandigarh to get back her car? It is not as if Tara would have to sign papers and retrieve her car. After all, Babli would be stealing the car in Chandigarh from the person for whom he had stolen it in the first place. Babli’s justification before Tara, about why he steals for a living, is also half-baked. At the end of the day, the audience also gets up with the feeling that their hero, Babli, had not done such an act of heroism that they would want to applaud him. For, most of whatever he does as the drama unfolds, is to undo the wrongs which happened because he had stolen Tara’s car.
There is a lot of toilet humour and while the masses will enjoy it, the classes and multiplex-frequenting audiences would find it a bit too crass for their liking. The romantic track of Babli and Tara is not half as heart-warming as it should have been. Also, Pallavi Sharda doesn’t match up to Ranbir Kapoor as the leading lady. In a youthful love story of the kind that Besharam is, hit music is of paramount importance but the songs of the film are far from being hit and popular.
Abhinav Singh Kashyap’s direction is very good. He understands the craft and has adopted a narrative style which, to an extent, camouflages the defects of the script. Had his script been as good as his direction, the film would have worked wonders. Lalit Pandit’s music is a major letdown of the film. Except for the title song (which is quite good), there isn’t much to shout about as far as the film’s audio appeal goes. Lyrics (Rajeev Barnwal, Nikhat Khan, Kumaar and Himanshu Kishan Mehra) are okay. Song picturisations  (by Rekha & Chinni Prakash, Pappu-Maalu, Remo D’souza and Bosco-Caesar) are eye-catching. Background music (Lalit Pandit) is appropriate. Madhu Vannier’s cinematography is nice. Sham Kaushal’s action scenes are okay. Sets (by Wasiq Khan and Tariq Umar Khan) are alright. Editing (Pranav V. Dhiwar and Pankaj K. Sharma) is quite sharp.
On the whole, Besharam is a poor fare which suffers heavily on three counts mainly – ordinary script, dull music and weak heroine. On the other hand, it has Ranbir Kapoor’s superstardom and the excellent initial (due to holiday of Gandhi Jayanti) as its plus points. Overall, the film will not be liked by a large section of the audience and will, therefore, not have an eventful run at the cinemas. The plus points will only help in reducing the losses of the investors. But losses in the film is a foregone conclusion.
Released on 2-10-’13 at Regal (daily 4 shows), Eros (daily 5 shows), New Excelsior (daily 5 shows) and other cinemas of Bombay by Reliance Entertainment. Publicity: very good. Opening: bumper (also due to holiday on 2nd). …….Also released all over. Opening was excellent everywhere. However, a horrifying decline in collections was noticed everywhere on Thursday (second day) and Friday (third day).