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This film is directed by the pioneer of not just successful but classy comedies (Hera Pheri, Hungama, Garam Masala) in India—Priyadarshan—but also of horror comedies with Bhool Bhulaiyaa (2007). Akshay Kumar, his favorite hero then, comes back with him in the new Bhooth Bangla: yes, we did have a rare old film in this genre with the same title in 1964.
So, what about this movie? Well, let me mention the avoidable ‘downs’ first. A horror comedy generally blends horror and humor in a seamless yet cohesive blend. But over here, I felt that the film could have been way funnier, of, if not, at least, much scarier. It is neither.
The second downer is that absolutely great talents in comedy—Asrani, Paresh Rawal, Tabu, Manoj Joshi and Rajpal Yadav are not given sufficient meat, especially akin to what they have got in Priyan’s past forays into laughs. Asrani and Tabu, in fact, get serious roles and the former disappears after a while (we were told that he had completed the film, but he seemingly did not before he left us).
The third downer is the extravagant length of 173 minutes, when it could have told, for all the story’s convolutions, quite smoothly and with much more impact in 150 minutes or so.
Now for the ‘ups’: Akshay Kumar as the insolent, irritable, rude and prude Arjun is in peak element, his character reminiscent of his role in Priyan’s 2000 masterpiece, Hera Pheri. His caring side is only seen when he interacts with his sister, Meera (Mithila Palkar) and in his limited footage with his father, Vasudev Acharya (Jisshu Sengupta) or Priya (Wamiqa Gabbi), the girl with whom he falls in love.
The plot, actually, is quite ingenious (story by Akash Kaushik), involving the Acharya family’s legacy of a haveli(mansion) that they inherit along with billions. Vasudev is based in London and conducts sessions on spirituality. When he is away on work globally, he never attends phone calls even from his children. And when in his absence, Arjun and Meera come to know that they have inherited billions from their grandfather, Dushyant Acharya (Rajesh Sharma) along with a palace-like mansion in Mangalpur in North India, he heads there, determined to get his sister married in it, as she has just been betrothed to her boyfriend, Rahul (Perin Malde).
When he arrives there, rescuing a damsel (Wamiqa) from falling off a train on the way, he finds to his shock a rundown mansion that will need tons of money to set it right within 10 days when the marriage is scheduled. The date cannot be changed as Rahul’s family priest (Manoj Joshi) had fixed that as the only possible auspicious one in years. He encounters a caretaker, Shantaram (Asrani), who has many shades to him. But most importantly, there is a locked room in the mansion whose key is missing and a legend that no one can marry in the town ever since the half-demon Vadhusur was killed by God’s emissary, Vrukshini eons ago.
Arjun scoffs at the legend, and begins work on the mansion, hiring Jagdish Kewalramani (Paresh Rawal), a sly and lucre-crazy wedding planner, who brings along his innocent nephew, Balli (Rajpal Yadav) to take charge of the electrical repairs. In best Priyan tradition here, logic is majorly sidelined in many ways for the sacred cause of humor in the next hour.
But the shadow of the legend looms large and mysterious thing begin to happen, The Acharya family’s guru (Zakir Hussain) is consulted, and he endorses the curse on the village. So does Vasudev when he is told of Arjun’s decision and rushes post-haste to Mangalpur. Meera and her in-laws too head there, and Arjun finally decides that the wedding will proceed as decided and that he will protect his sister. What follows is what the climax is about.
The screenplay (Abhilash Nair, Priyan himself and Rohan Shankar, who also pens the dialogues) has an interesting interval point and several twists in the second half, but the humor quotient goes more than a shade dull in the second, more vital half, which is where Bhool Bhulaiyaa and both its franchise follow-ups (not from Priyan), Stree and Stree 2had triumphed. The principal twist is terrific in concept but by that time, one has already got a shade restive because of the length and several avoidable sequences.
Rohan Shankar’s lines thus score highly in the first half when we see Arjun nitpicking, grumbling, yelling and generally dismissing the legend of the curse as a game of vested interests by Shantaram and others. His sequence with Shantaram over the paintings and death of his ancestor is crazy, hilarious and classic Priyan stuff, as also the sequence where what he says is muffled each time by a napkin. The few comic sequences in which Jagdish finds himself are almost like toilet humor (Priyan never does that and thus scored high in his adult comedy, Garam Masala), but the naughty angles between the innocent Balli and the voluptuous working woman Ragini are ‘howlarious.’
Technically smart, the film’s background score by Ronnie Raphael tries its best to match the needs but is often in overdrive. Big shoutouts to production designer Saby Cyril, cinematographer Divakar Mani. and composer and lyricist duo Pritam and Kumaar for the catchy yet enduring Ram ji aake bhalaa karenge are in order, though that song, the only arresting one of the four numbers, is criminally wasted in the end-credit titles, that too sans full-screen!
Priyadarshan extracts a wow of a performance from Akshay Kumar, and from two more actors who make a deep mark in smaller roles—Mithila Parkar as Meera and Bhavna Pani as Ragini. Zakir Hussain, Jisshu Sengupta and Rajesh Sharma score in roles that are unusual for them, and Wamiqa Gabbi is good in her limited role. But Tabu (especially) and Manoj Joshi are wasted, and the rest of the principal cast underused as mentioned above.
Overall, the film gets more than pass marks but could have ended up as a classic with its unique story and crackerjack twists. Its huge length, moreover, could outwit the merits and lead to modest or even below-par collections.
Rating: ***1/2
Cape of Good Films’ & Balaji Motion Pictures’ Bhooth Bangla Produced by: Akshay Kumar, Shobha Kapoor & Ektaa R. Kapoor Directed by: Priyadarshan Written by: Akash Kaushik, Priyadarshan, Abhilash Nair & Rohan Shankar Music: Pritam Starring: Akshay Kumar, Tabu, Wamiqa Gabbi, Mithila Palkar, Asrani, Paresh Rawal, Rajpal Yadav, Manoj Joshi, Zakir Hussain, Rajesh Sharma, Jisshu Sengupta, Bhavan Pani, Perin Malde & others
