Movie Review: ‘Bol Bachchan’ (** Two Star)

( By Akshat Sharma) First of all a statutory warning to all cine-goers!  Leave your brains at home before you rush to the nearest theatre to watch ‘Bol Bachchan’. Watching a movie like this could be painful if you rack your brains. So leave it behind before you step out of your home. Agreed it has some of the finest actors the industry could boast of, agreed we love Bollywood chutzpah but going through movies like ‘Bol Bachchan’ is rarely funny and mostly agonizing.

The movie begins with a song and dance number ‘Bol Bol Bachchan’. We find a family leaving their homeland for an unknown destination.  The family reaches a town where they meet Prithvi Raj Singh played by Ajay Devgn. This modern day Prithvi Raj has no royal legacy behind him. He is indeed a local muscleman with a funny streak.

He doesn’t like his cousins but he loves his sister Radhika, played by Prachi Desai. She is studying in Delhi. One fine day she was returning to her hometown but before she could reach there she was kidnapped.  It marks the beginning of high drama, cars flying in air and some heated exchange of words.

We were told by the PR people that the movie was inspired by ‘Golmaal’ the all time classic comedy immortalized by Amol Palekar and Utpal Dutt.  It seems Abhishek Bachchan sporting a moustache like Amol Palekar was the point of reference as ‘Bol Bachchan’ stands nowhere close to ‘Golmaal’. Abhishek Bachchan is the only saving grace in the movie.

Ajay Devgn doesn’t inspire much confidence with his performance. Other characters are only used as fillers barring the exception of Archana Puran Singh who has managed to tickle our funny bones. Being a judge in a comedy show certainly helps in certain cases!

Directory director Rohit Shetty is no doubt the ‘Maharaaja of Madness’. He has shown uncanny ability to churn out super duper hit movies one after another. Once again he has done what he knows the best. ‘Bol Bachchan’ is a movie only for those who believe in taking an escape route out of this temporal world through madcap comedies.