As an American, it's really hard for me to judge just how offensive Santa Banta Pvt Ltd (2016) is. Santa and Banta are the "stars" of a series of jokes in India, rather like Sven and Ole in the Midwest. At best, the Santa Banta jokes present the Sikh community as naive, boisterous, but ultimately brave and good-hearted hicks, which makes it a strange subject for a film. The movie does open with a dedication to the Sikh community, and there's a lot of dialogue towards the end about how Sikhs are brave patriots who are the first to defend India, but our heroes are still naive, boisterous, but ultimately brave and good-hearted hicks.
This Santa (Boman Irani) and Banta (Vir Das) are unemployed layabouts who spend their time drinking and crashing parties in search of free food. After Santa is forcefully reminded of his lost love Billoo (Neha Dhupia), the pair resolve to reform and get honest jobs. And they do! They immediately get a job driving a truck . . . which turns out to be a front for liquor smuggling. Santa and Banta are arrested, but are promptly bailed out by RAW agent Arvind (Vijay Raaz), who is in Punjab looking for two missing agents, codenamed Santa and Banta.
Arvind has the wrong Santa and Banta. He knows he has the wrong Santa and Banta, but he packs them off to Fiji anyway, mostly to annoy his boss Hanumanth (Tinnu Anand.) Our heroes are supposed to be rescuing a kidnapped ambassador (Ayub Khan), but instead they sort of bumble around and annoy the various suspects (mostly Ram Kapoor and Neha Dhupia again), like Columbo if there were two of him and they both really were stupid. Fortunately, actual and hyper-competent RAW agent Cutie (Lisa Haydon) and less competent but skilled supervisor Akbar (Sanjay Mishra) are there to watch over them.
They also keep running into another cultural stereotype; Nepali expat and aspiring crime lord Chooza (Johny Lever), who is convinced that Santa and Banta are there to capture him, and plans to stab them with his kukri.
There's a lot of plot in this movie, and none of it matters. The movie is a vehicle for jokes, and some of them are funny. The cast is full of veteran supporting actors; Boman Irani is the biggest name here, and he actually manages to give Santa a tiny bit of gravitas.
However, I don't think Santa and Banta being Santa and Banta really adds anything to the movie, apart from a sliver of name recognition. It's a fish out of water comedy set in Fiji, and so the leads could be from literally anywhere in the world except for Fiji; dumb guys are a universal phenomenon, so there's no need to dabble in stereotypes.
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