Two decades ago, Priyadarshan and Akshay Kumar — Paresh Rawal and Asrani from their winning Hera Pheri team thrown into the mix — meshed horror with comedy to deliver Bhool Bhulaiyaa, a film that brought together folklore and urban legend, superstition and psychology, to make for an engaging watch. Monjulika became a part of modern Bollywood lore, and the film’s nostalgic hook was enough to spur two more films, but without Akshay or Priyadarshan involved.
So when the news arrived that the hit combo was set to return with a film together after 15 years, and that too a horror comedy, expectations naturally soared. But we are living in a time where the genre has taken a leap with the Stree films, powered as they are with social commentary and the overturning of many a formula. Bhooth Bangla — misplaced comedy in the first half, inadequate horror in the second, mangled mess as a whole — is definitely not the film we were hoping for when we walked in.
The film, for starters, is too dated in tone and treatment. So much so that one almost expects a naagin or two to pop out any moment — this is an Ekta Kapoor co-production, after all. Instead, what we have is a human-sized bat, sporting HMU (hair and make-up, in fashion parlance) that looks like the leftovers from Akshay’s outing as the avian antagonist in Robot 2.
Vadhusur is what our villain is called, one that has been terrorising the village of Mangalpur since time immemorial, kidnapping brides on the night of their wedding and unleashing murder and mayhem in general. Cut to our hero Arjun Acharya (Akshay) inheriting an ancestral bangla (he doesn’t know about the ‘bhooth’ bit yet) and landing up from London to get it wedding-ready for his sister. A motley crowd soon congregates— a caretaker (the late Asrani), a wedding planner (Paresh Rawal), an electrician (Rajpal Yadav) — and the first hour becomes a playing ground for some extremely loud comic set pieces, most of which involve incessant screaming in the name of dialogue delivery or overt physical buffoonery.
In the Housefull films, a running gag has been Akshay’s character getting slapped around by monkeys. In Bhooth Bangla, he gets smacked by a sandal at one point. Paresh Rawal routinely has his posterior attacked — boiling water, fire, anything and everything is thrown at his rear end, while Asrani — God bless his soul — is repeatedly screamed at, a situation (or more) that is mined for laughs. The only time I tittered a wee bit was when someone mistook a wig for a dead crow — which just goes to show how lowbrow the comedy in this film is.
Flashback within flashback within flashback is Bhooth Bangla’s idea of an intense plot. So much so that you can’t really keep track (and after a while, choose not to) of what is in the past and what constitutes the here and now. At 175 minutes, the film feels as long as the 36,000 purnima nights mentioned repeatedly in the mumbo-jumbo plot. In an age of decreasing attention spans, where even a minute-long reel is often skipped quickly to the end, Bollywood’s new-found penchant for making overlong films (this year, we have already had Border 2, O’Romeo, Dhurandhar: The Revenge and now Bhooth Bangla) is screaming to be studied.
The antecedents of Bhooth Bangla’s creature-villain is unnecessarily dense, while the attempt (the writers are Priyadarshan, Akash Kaushik, Rohan Shankar and Abhilash Nair) to give a Stree-like spin to the origins of the leading lady (Wamiqa Gabbi has a brief, unmemorable role) is flat-out predictable. In the absence of genuine horror and comedy, the makers throw all they can at the audience. That includes a mantra-chanting contraption that acts as both Vadhusur’s strength and kryptonite, an amateurishly-created CGI climax and a sexual gag that makes you wish you could undo Bhooth Bangla, time travel to 2007, and watch Bhool Bhulaiyaa all over again.
The real horror in this film is actually in its casting. Jisshu Sengupta, at 49, is cast as 58-year-old Akshay’s father, and this is not even in flashback. While we are all for age-agnostic casting, this one stretches it too far, what with Jisshu painting his hair in every shade of white to try and look the part. The actor has a sizeable role, though. Tabu, meanwhile, makes quick work of her brief appearance. Mithila Palkar, junior to Akshay by 25 years, is cast as his sister. The talented actor’s only role is to function as a distressed bride-to-be saddled with superstitious in-laws. Her character, truth be told, is not the only regressive bit about this film.
With Bhooth Bangla, Akshay Kumar’s idea and execution of comedy has devolved considerably. With the next Hera Pheri film now swimming in troubled waters, it is perhaps time to go back to the drawing board again. The comic talent in him deserves better. So do we.
