Sitting through Bol Bachchan is like sitting through multiple car wrecks. No, seriously. There is enough car-on-car action all through this unwarranted Rohit Shetty remake of Golmaal .
Well, it’s made by stuntmen, you see. Something they don’t want you to miss.
Think 12 Angry Men performed entirely by blondes while they are watching the Sidney Lumet classic on stage because they keep forgetting their lines. Or Star Wars staged by the cast of World Wrestling Federation just because they speak English like Yoda. “Talk like him, we can. So fight with tubelights, let us.”
There’s enough bad English in this film under the pretext of humour to make even Rowdy Rathore go: Don’t angry me.
If you liked Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Golmaal , which you sure did, you would want to protest this assault on one of the effortlessly funny films of all time.
Here, the effort shows in every scene.
Every actor opens his mouth knowing well that he has to deliver a funny line that’s mostly dead on arrival. While the iconic Ramprasad Dashrathprasad Sharma (Amol Palekar) was a natural born scum who premeditated his lies and Bhavani Shankar (Utpal Dutt) was a hypocritical culture Nazi, Rohit Shetty and his writers paint their characters in monochrome.
Here the hero lies because he is noble and his nemesis buys it because he’s kind at heart. Abbas (Abhishek Bachchan) wants to save a child from drowning in the temple. So to prevent bloodshed, he lies that he’s Abhishek Bachchan.
Whoa! So that’s how communal India of today has become.
What’s worse is the fact that the makers resort to gay jokes by making Abbas play an effeminate dance teacher who turns on an army of wrestlers. Stay classy, guys.
We can’t really fault the actors here when the lines were cursed from the start. Abhishek Bachchan gives it all and the effort shows sometimes while Ajay Devgn walks around hamming it like he’s in on the joke.
And thus, the classic comedy about generation gap becomes approximated to, well, people blowing up cars while making off-colour jokes about race and homosexuality because there are puns waiting to be milked.
Yes, you will laugh a couple of times mostly because the actors manage to salvage a bad joke here and there.
But most of it does not even make sense. Sample Ajay Devgn translating “You make my heart swell with pride to” to “My chest has become blouse”.
That’s pretty much how funny Rohit Shetty’s translation of Golmaal is.
Bol Bachchan
Genre : Comedy
Director: Rohit Shetty
Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Ajay Devgn, Asin, Prachi Desai
Storyline: A man lies through his teeth to save his job
Bottomline: The worst remake of a film since Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag
Published - July 07, 2012 08:32 pm IST
