Bol Bachchan Movie Review Rating :3.5/5

When a director is back after delivering a fabulous string of 4 big blockbusters in a row, then it’s indeed going to be a hugely stressful event for him undoubtedly. Because not only the viewers but the industry also is bound to expect a lot from his project keeping in mind the excellent track record of his successes. And when further, the same director is back with a remake of one of the Top 10 All Time Favourite Comedies of Indian Cinema then obviously the expectations are going to reach sky high.

So here we have director Rohit Shetty striking again with his updated version of Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Cult Classic GOLMAAL, to which he tries to give his own twists and turns instead of copying the original as a true fan. In fact this very intelligent step of the director remains the only plus point going in his favour, as there are not many in this world (including myself) who would appreciate seeing an updated revised version of that incomparable original classic having a tremendous repeat value of itself.

Now what Rohit does in his BOL BACHCHAN is that he re-writes a completely new & fresh script around the basic storyline of the original GOLMAAL and never makes the viewer feel that they are watching just a pure re-make. On a positive note, this is exactly how it should be done as there is no way that any director can re-live a classic film like GOLMAAL after more than 3 decades with the same elegance. So though we have the same plot being worked upon here, still Rohit tries to rope in some new characters, more comic mannerisms and few more forcibly funny sequences to make his BOL BACHCHAN a completely fresh film based on a famous masterpiece.

But unfortunately, the sad part of all this hard work done by the director and his team is that they hugely fail in the process and their newly added ingredients in the re-written script of GOLMAAL simply do not work or fall flat. Hence the director, who has given Hits after Hits in the recent past, is not able to deliver this time and comes up with a pretty lousy & over the top film which doesn’t give you even one enjoyable sequence in its entire lengthy duration ending with a disastrous climax. In other words, the last 20 minutes of the film, even make you wonder that Is this really a Rohit Shetty film running on the screen? Moreover, the disappointment doesn’t stop on the writing and execution level only as all the actors in it also remain a big let-down throughout which was not at all expected in a film by the director, who is known to have the pulse of his audience.

BB starts off unlike a comedy and surprisingly there is no great funny stuff to be enjoyed in its opening 40 minutes. With such an uninteresting start, all the high spirits of watching it actually turn negative and this continues till the intermission working against all the expectations from the Hit team of Rohit Shetty and Ajay Devgan. In the second half too, the director tries to add more elements than required which actually result in a poor mess. Particularly the inclusion of a gay character in the script remains the weakest part of the film as neither the actor (Abhishek) nor his director are able to handle it well.

Honestly, I only enjoyed watching Neeraj Vohra & Prachi Desai alone, despite of the presence of all the know actors in this big banner project. Ajay, more or less remains in his SINGHAM hangover only and Abhishek tries too hard to be funny without any success. Frankly I neither could laugh on the English dialogues of Ajay nor on the weird kind of Kathak dancing of Abhishek which was really awful. Asin is just there to look beautiful and Archana Puran Singh does make a sincere effort to generate some laughter. But overall they all are not able to put up a good show collectively. Plus I remained hugely dissatisfied from the supporting act of Krishna, who unarguably was given a role much below his actual caliber.

BB also falters in its action and cinematography department as whatever happens on the screen looks like ‘all seen before’ in the director’s earlier films only. Its high time Rohit should realize that he cannot use the same kind of camerawork, slow motions, fighting stunts, flying people and car blasts in all his films repeatedly. Musically also the film doesn’t have anything great to offer apart from one interesting song “Chalao Na Naino Se Baan Re”. Just like the film, its title track also goes over the top showing the over-confidence of both its actors and the director.

To be straight, BOL BACHCHAN is just not a Rohit Shetty film full of light entertainment as compared to some of his previous ventures. I loved watching his GOLMAAL 3, ALL THE BEST and SINGHAM, but BOL BACHCHAN is simply not anything even close to these. Interestingly one sequence of the film (when Archna Puran Singh is introduced in a Nautanki), also reminded me of a similar scene in Mukul Anand’s HUM, wherein Kader Khan is discovered in an exactly similar situation by both Anupam Kher & Anu Kapoor.

The director revealed his fascination towards the cult classic GOLMAAL (1979) when he started using the word in the title of his chain of films beginning with GOLMAL: FUN UNLIMITED in 2006. But now when he has re-made the classic officially, he simply misses the opportunity and comes up with a project which will be surely remembered as a “Bad Attempt” in his career.

However, there is one silver lining in this black cloud that after BOL BACHCHAN, perhaps the silly and avoidable trend of re-making the golden classics of 70s & 80s would come to an end. Because if this doesn’t stop here, then be ready for seeing many more such trash remakes of those cinematic masterpieces, which surely indicate the emergence of a “Creative Block” in our Hindi Film Industry.

Rating :2/5

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