But that’s not the worst part. By borrowing the basic premise from Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s 1979 classic Golmaal, and armouring it with nitwit humour, Shetty manages a really ugly tribute to Mukherjee.
Mukherjee celebrated the follies and quirks of the Indian Everyman. He is unforgettable, and enjoyable, in every age. To compare the two is, of course, silly. Bol Bachchan belongs to a class of Bollywood comedy which began with the films of David Dhawan. Lucrative at the box office, they are driven entirely by humour that uses staple laughing stocks of traditional India, like the gay man, and creates around them situations which make them pitiful and idiotic.
Clichéd: Actor Ajay Devgn’s attempts at comedy are awkward
The “Indian mass” which wants “escapism” apparently devours it. In what sense this is escapism is befuddling, because essentially you are getting the same stale stock in every film—I don’t remember the last time a new stereotype was created by Bollywood humour. The gay man, the fat woman—to make fun of them in the dark theatre, on the big screen, is meant to be familiar and comforting. Unlike in Mukherjee’s films, there is no surprise or sharp wit.
Bol Bachchan is one of the most distressing examples of this Dhawan school. Beginning as an ode to Amitabh Bachchan, the ageing superstar, which justifies the film’s title, Bol Bachchan has no value as a work of art. Its only value perhaps is the naked honesty of a director whose only motive for making it is its box-office prospects.
Note the outrageously regressive storyline. A young man, Abbas Ali (Abhishek Bachchan), and his sister Sania (Asin) are homeless because their inherited home is lost to acrimonious relatives. A sympathetic uncle, Shastri (Asrani), convinces them to move to his village, somewhere in north India, where Abbas can find work. The custodian of this village is Prithviraj (Ajay Devgn), who lives in a haveli with his sister (Prachi Desai). Surrounded by bumbling cronies, Prithviraj’s idiocy is revered in the village. Nobody laughs at his English, strung together by literal translations of Hindi words into English (the audience is meant to, but they largely have a mind-numbing effect instead).
Asin lacks charm and sassiness
Abbas happens to irk the village by stepping into a disputed temple, after which he changes his name to Abhishek Bachchan. He gets a job with Prithviraj and becomes his trusted foot soldier. To protect his real identity, Abbas has to act also as Abhishek’s brother, a clean-shaven, sissy homosexual man who teaches Prithviraj’s sister Kathak. Among the characters in the plot who help Abbas maintain this facade are an ageing courtesan, Zohra (Archana Puran Singh), and actors of the local theatre group. Landlord, haveli, bad English, homosexual Kathak teacher. The stereotypes are staggering.
Clichés pile up as the film progresses, one loud sequence after another. Like Singham, the last film Shetty directed, Bol Bachchan uses background music and sound effects with pointless abandon. A sound effect follows every English sentence uttered by Prithviraj (“My chest has expanded and I have become a blouse”, and other such inanities). Funny is punctuated by sound effects over and over again. Shetty’s only visual tools are fast motion, slow motion and fast, jarring zoom-ins—not very different from the way television soaps are shot. This is film-making in a hurry. The makers are in a hurry to somehow pack in the stupid jokes and hurl them at you.
The performances are overblown, matching the storytelling. Devgn has performed many comic roles, most famously in Shetty’s Golmaal films. He is not a natural comic actor and in this role, his effort to appear idiotic as well as frightening is awkward. Those English one-liners, banal as they are, get the worst articulator in Devgn. The two characters Bachchan plays are contrasts, but neither is engaging—Bachchan comes across as an uninterested actor. As Abbas, he adopts the gay mannerisms we have seen in films since the days of Govinda, if not earlier. Desai and Asin, in the female leads, lack charm and sassiness.
Bol Bachchan is not about laughs. At best, it’s an experiment that tests if the same stupid jokes work with us, Bollywood lovers, over and over again. Source:http://videos.livemint.com
