Poorna Jagannathan Is Hilarious As a Sexually Aggressive Villain in Netflix’s ‘The Out-Laws’

By Anna Menta

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The Out-Laws

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Poorna Jagannathan

Anyone who’s seen an episode of Never Have I Ever knows that Poorna Jagannathan—aka Devi’s mom—is hilarious. Dr. Vishwakumar is the stern, no-nonsense Indian mom who snaps one-liners like, “Pray you get Princeton. Don’t waste your prayers on stupid things like world peace!” and we love her for that. But in The Out-Laws, the new Adam Sandler-produced comedy now streaming on Netflix, Jagannathan gets a chance to be downright silly. And, surprising no one, she absolutely crushes it.

Directed by Tyler Spindel, with a screenplay written by Evan Turner and Ben Zazove, The Out-Laws stars Adam Devine as a soon-to-be groom named Owen, who is looking forward to finally meeting his future in-laws. His fiancée (Nina Dobrev) says her parents have been abroad doing humanitarian work. But when Billy and Lilly McDermott (Pierce Brosnan and Ellen Barkin) show up and rob the bank Owen works at, he begins to suspect there is more to the story. More like out-laws, am I right? As it turns out, they have a good reason for robbing the bank: They owe money to a big, bad villain, played by—you guessed it—Poorna Jagannathan.

Jagannathan stars as Rehan, a notorious crime boss who once used to rob banks alongside the McDermotts—before she went to the dark side. She’s basically a cartoon villain, complete with an exaggerated Russian accent. (It’s over the top, but it’s consistent, which, as Adam Sandler knows, is the key to any successfully funny accent.)

When we first meet Rehan, she is engaging in classic cartoon villain behavior: Examining a diamond brought to her by a henchman. She declares said diamond “shit,” and presses an ominous red button on her desk. The henchman confesses he thought it would open a trap door to a shark tank—in fact, it was just a call button to get a custodian in to clean up the henchman’s dead body. After shooting him in the head, Jagannathan muses to herself, “Shark tank,” before screaming out, “CALL THE AQUARIUM!” The timing, the delivery, and the facial expression Jagannathan pairs with the line—all perfection.

The hits just keep coming. Jagannathan is having a blast, and it shows. Scene after scene, she startled genuine laughs out of me, from her calling Adam Devine “that little c–nt over there,” to declaring her love for Machine Gun Kelly, on the grounds that he has “skinny dick energy.” And, of course, perhaps her best joke in the film is a bit of brilliant physical comedy, in which Jagannathan mimes eating Pierce Brosnan’s dick like a corn on the cob.

Beyond stealing every scene with her comedic genius, it should also be noted that Jagannathan is serving severe looks in The Out-Laws. While Nalini Vishwakumar tends toward sensible mom-and-doctor outfits, the criminal mastermind known as Rehan goes for sparkly sequence dresses, turquoise jumpsuits, and ornate dangly earrings. Rehan claims she has a “magic pussy,” and with ‘fits like that, I believe her.

It’s not a stretch to say that Poorna Jagannathan is easily the best part of The Out-Laws. Like, by a mile. Where’s her leading role in a movie already?