Bol Bachchan

Starring: Ajay Devgan, Abhishek Bachchan, Asin, Prachi Desai
Directed by Rohit Shetty
Rating: **

rishikesh Mukherjee’s Golmaal, a movie about confusion of identities, made us laugh out loud by piling one humorous situation on another. Rohit Shetty seeks inspiration from the classic. In fact, he lifts some incidents and situations straight from the original, then adds some tacky sets, kitschy colours, over-the-top acting and loud jokes and gags to deliver a critic-proof blockbuster. One that’ll certainly rake in crores, but is unlikely to find a respectable place in history or become stuff that our collective nostalgia is made of.

The movie begins on a boring note. Long backstories introduce the characters and set up the scene. Some self-righteous, deliberate Hindu-Muslim bhai-bhai posturing plays (“Ramzan mein Ram aur Diwali mein Ali hota hai”). Abhishek steps into Amol Palekar’s shoes, but the likeable lad stays entrapped in his illustrious surname—right from the movie title and opening song—instead of finding his own space.

Moreover, his gay act feels desperate, a rather shoddy way of bringing the house down. Devgan (Utpal Dutt in the original) plays to the gallery with his bad English, some of it sublimely silly but most very contrived and juvenile (“chhatti ka doodh yaad dila doonga” becomes “I’ll make you remember Milk No. 6”). Shetty gives enough screen space and time to his Comedy Circus compatriots—Archana Puran Singh and Krishna. The pretty girls—Asin and Prachi—are little more than pretty props.