5 May 2007

Movie Review - Bheja Fry

This movie, I understand from India’s custodian of Bollywood a.k.a. Times of India, has become a major hit. It has already raked in 5.5 crores. A tidy profit when you consider it was made for only 60 lakhs. This is not surprising when you look at the story and characters. The actors are not mainstream (Heck, even one of lower level Khans wont come for a paltry 60 lakhs). The story happens largely over the course of an evening. And the director smartly wraps up the movie in a couple of hours instead of stretching the wafer thin storyline to a standard 3 hours. You don’t even notice the lack of songs till you start writing your blog post.

The moot question – was the movie good? The answer would be..hmmm. I did not like the basic premise of rich guy Ranjeet Thadani calling over an imbecile every Friday for him and his friends to poke fun at and laugh. The characters were all not well etched. Milind Soman was positively wooden and Ranvir Shoerey could not pull off the paranoid Tax Inspector act.

The second question – was the movie entertaining? Yes. This was largely due to the presence of Vinay Pathak as your average, middle-class government servant, Bharat Bhushan. The man is so good you cannot believe it at times. He carries off the most inane lines with a blustering sincerity that makes you neither sympathise nor judge. He is just who he is.

So while it is definitely not even in the league of the other small budget movie Khosla ka Ghosla that it is being compared with, it is probably worth a watch if the alternative is a Karan Johar movie.

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