Sanjay Dutt seems to be have been conned into co-producing such an unadulterated disaster. Dutt’s career as a producer has never been really strobe-lit: Kaante, Zinda (which was a box-office calamity though) and Shootout At Lokhandwala and the anthology that was Dus Kahaniyan(again a flop) apart, it has been far from impressive.
But nowhere was it as woefully dismal as in this ‘horror comedy’ whose only claim to a dubious kind of novelty is that it mixes the tropes of a regular horror drama as well as a horror comedy (there are a trio of friends, as in the Stree franchise, to start with!) with a new angle.
And that fresh deviation is what is most troublesome for us!
We have, for starters, a St. Vincent’s College of Arts and Culture, located somewhere in Delhi. The college’s hostel rooms resemble star hotels in the luxurious looks, and in the entire film, we do not see a single student studying. The exteriors of the college shown in long shots and the close-ups look like completely different edifices.
So far, so weird. Moving on, over here, the management allows a ‘Virgin Tree’ to flourish in the campus. This tree is deified by those seeking true love on every St. Valentine’s Day. How Cupid!
The management has no qualms about inviting a ‘paraphysicist’ a.k.a. ghostbuster and setting him up in the campus to find out what is going on, so that their reputation does not go bust. And this threat to the name of this institution that they are worried about is because in the month following Valentine’s Day, on Holika Dahan day, a student commits suicide there!
The ‘hero’ is a lovelorn specimen named Shantanu (Sunny Singh), who weeps before the tree one night as his love has betrayed him, and so the spirit of a woman (Mouni Roy) residing there (!) gets emotionally affected, as she has gone through a similar experience, and falls in love with him. Instead of killing him, she falls in love with him.
Now suddenly we have Shantanu falling in love with Ananya (Palak Tiwari), and the earlier-mentioned spook, who calls herself Mohabbat (which means love for those who came in without even basic knowledge of Hindustani!) cannot stand human competition. In a moment of honesty (both she and Shantanu as well as all the tree’s devotees are craving for ‘sacchi mohabbat’ or true love, with the phrase repeated so often in the movie you will cringe at hearing it ever!), she informs (and proves to) Shantanu that she is not human, but a wandering (and wondering!!) spirit.
The ghostbuster is Baba (Sanjay Dutt going all out yet again to reprise his Munnabhai walk-and-talk for the umpteenth time and attempting ‘poker-faced’ comedy) and it is left to him to solve the case, unearth Mohabbat’s (real name Karishma)’s sad past and finally get a twist in his own life too.
Bizarre are the jerky goings-on, plebian is the level of humor, and non-scary but eminently laughable are the horror aspects. Apart from Sanjay Dutt, both Sunny Singh and Palak Tiwari practically sleepwalk as well. Nick and Aasif Khan try to do the best of their ill-etched and template-driven characters as Shantanu’s roommates and buddies, while Mouni Roy is sincere as Mohabbat / Karishma.
The music echoes the film’s general levels, and so do the script and direction. Humongous technical and financial resources are splurged, but the audience who will watch it will splurge a decent sum of money and time on this cinematic aberration. My rating is thus based purely on the technicians’ hard work and, maybe, Mouni Roy’s sincerity.
Rating: *1/2
Zee Studios’, Soham Rockstar Entertainment’s & Three Dimension Motion Pictures’ The Bhootnii Produced by: Sanjay Dutt & Deepak Mukut Directed by: Sidhaant Sachdev Written by: Vankush Arora & Sidhaant Sachdev Music: Mukul Suryavanshi, Shabbir Ahmed, Iconyk, Shashi & Upside Down Starring: Sanjay Dutt, Sunny Singh, Palak Tiwari, Nick, Aasif Khan & others
(Used under special arrangement with NIT)
