Deli Boys review: New Disney+ offering is a raucous, absurdist mobster comedy

Disney’s streaming platform has plenty of adult-oriented content.

When Rivals opens with a shot of a thrusting buttock and chases it up with a Christmas party orgy, then we really should stop being shocked.

Still, Deli Boys, a raucous gangster comedy that dropped on Disney+ this week, drops the word “cocaine” so many times in a single episode, it’s enough to elicit an “oh my” when you think about how it’s sharing a platform with Dumbo and Bambi.

Perhaps it’s the casualness Deli Boys deals with cocaine that makes it slightly surprising. But that’s also why the cheeky comedy mostly works. It has few qualms, little moralising and plenty of tee-hee acts that’s played for laughs.

If you’re going to play in this sandbox, you better be ready to have fun and make a mess.

The Deli Boys in the title refers to Mir (Asif Ali) and Raj Dar (Saagar Shaikh), two Pakistani-American brothers who have had a good ride on their family’s money.

Mir is he conscientious one — he went to business school, loves a spreadsheet and want to impress his dad, Baba (Iqbal Theba). Raj is a layabout party boy with a passion for drugs and woo-woo spiritualism, but mostly drugs.

They assume the family cash comes from its chain of corner delis across Philadelphia. Boy, are they shocked to discover after Baba’s untimely death (a golf ball to the head will do it) that their dad was the head of a criminal empire.

There’s not time to process any of it before the FBI swoops in and seizes all their assets, leaving Mir and Raj with one shonky corner shop and the shag-carpet apartment above it. Oh, and the illegal enterprise.

With a vacuum at the top and a power struggle between Lucky (Poorna Jagannathan) and Ahmad (Brian George), the brothers are appointed interim bosses of Baba’s gang even if they have absolutely no idea what they’re doing.

They don’t know how to deal with, for example, a guy who despite being shot at point blank range, refuses to die, running around with a paper bag over his head straight into traffic, or how to explain the disappearance to that dude’s British cousin (a delightful guest spot from Queer Eye’s Tan France).

Or how to forge an alliance with the Philly crime boss, Chickie Lozano (Kevin Corrigan) and his chaotic daughter.

There’s also a dogged FBI agent (Alexandra Ruddy) who’s convinced Mir and Raj are criminal masterminds and she wants to use the case to prove her worth to her boys club boss.

Plus, there is, of course, the cocaine operation. So much coke — bricks, baggies, lines and bumps — being cut with baby laxative and a pinch of cayenne.

There’s not much depth to Deli Boys but it’s good for plenty of laughs, especially from Jagannathan as the trigger-happy Lucky. Jagannathan broke out in The Night Of, as the suffering mum of Riz Ahmed’s Naz, and then in coming-of-age comedy Never Have I Ever.

But here, she’s no one’s mum and gets to relish in being this absolutely kick-arse and confident albeit exasperated crime lieutenant with designs on the top job. It’s a joy to watch her let loose.

Deli Boys has crackling chemistry, absurd jokes and, at times, a squishy centre. Mir and Raj, as different as they are, are forever bonded by the secret their dad kept from them, and the challenge ahead of them.

Sometimes, when they’re flailing, you just want to give them a hug.

This might be a group of mobsters and wannabe mobsters whose crimes will surely have wider ramifications, but you’re still rooting for them to succeed.