Bhool Chuk Maaf Review – Rediff.com movies

Watching Rajkummar Rao and a horde of talented veterans indulge in mockery is getting tiresome, observes Sukanya Verma.

It’s only fitting that Rajkummar Rao’s newest comedy should be about him being stuck in a time loop and unable to find a breakthrough. Lately that’s how watching the actor feels in one interchangeable performance after another wherein he’s a perennially exasperated small town lad grappling with rom-com crisis.

A similar air of déjà vu envelops his character Ranjan Tiwari in Karan Sharma’s Bhool Chuk Maaf as well as the viewer while beholding familiar sights and stock.

Only this time the setting is Banaras teeming with visuals of ghats, genda phools and gobar.

Ranjan’s family (Raghuvir Yadav, Seema Pahwa) as well as the girl (a terribly jarring Wamiqa Gabbi pouting, cooing like a five year old is no one’s idea of fun) he wants to marry — Titli Mishra’s (Zakir Hussain, Anubha Fatehpuria) are the typical garden variety of parents limited to huff and puff, growl, fawn and outrage.

Everybody fulfils their brief of a loud caricature hollering away for the sake of puerile humour and play of lingo that duly highlights Bollywood’s need to see small town folk as provincial and clamorous at all times.

Bhool Chuk Maaf has a fairly well-intentioned premise that’s marred by the monotony of its leading man’s overkill in the space as well as writer-director Karan Sharma’s noisy, callow treatment.

When we first meet Ranjan and Titli, they’re making a bungling attempt to elope that ends in them and their folks creating a rumpus inside the police station. It’s a thumbs down for the love story from the daddies since Ranjan doesn’t work and Titli isn’t expected to.

Bhool Chuk Maaf cannot make up its mind about Ranjan’s unhappily unemployed and good-for-nothing slacker status but finds it waggish when Titli pawns off her mum’s gold to fetch him money. This is a romance between a pair of low hanging fruit personas until the expectation of virtue begins to weigh one of them down.

The Groundhog Day aspect of Bhool Chuk Maaf kickstarts when an employment fixer (Sanjay Mishra) and some divine intervention from ‘Mahadev’ comes to Ranjan’s rescue. Before he knows it, it’s haldi time.

One experience of the goopy ritual is traumatic enough, but a lifetime of rolling in turmeric batter is bound to put anyone off. Ranjan finds himself trapped inside haldi day horror as the order of events grow unnervingly recurring before him.

But the novelty of its ‘been there done that’ theme doesn’t quite hit like it ought to. What’s instantly off is how all the characters flanking him fail to convey they’re going through the motions for the very first time. Instead of being caught unawares, they all sound tediously vexed by the happenings.

Under Bhool Chuk Maaf‘s hollow, hee-hee veneer is a story trying to say something pertinent about the absurd nature of ritualistic pandering under the pretext of superstition and lack of equal opportunities when minorities and their rights are quelled for the majority’s benefit.

The latter is an awkwardly manufactured plot twist, a morality tale whose ‘Tiwari-Ansari’ discrimination sounds about right but acquires a patronising air in Bhool Chuk Maaf‘s cunningly designed Hindu saviour complex.

It would feel a lot more fair if the hero wasn’t awarded for doing the decent thing but chided for his irresponsibility that prioritises big fat weddings of the prospectless above everything else.

Watching Rao and a horde of other talented veterans indulge in such mockery is getting tiresome now. We’ve received an apology in the title. May his next make amends too.

Bhool Chuk Maaf Review Rediff Rating: