Bad. Review on Bhool Bhulaiyaa

I saw this movie last night and it was very funny...unintentionally that is. Priyadarshan's attempt at combining psychological, spiritual and supernatural elements is very laughable. He does the same in his miserable attempt to combine comedy with horror / thriller (or whatever). Having not seen the original Malayalam version, I cannot say how this remake compares.

However, I think Priyadarshan is trying his best to win the worst director award (if that really existed). After watching about the first half hour, I thought the film could have had potential were it in the hands of a better director but as the film proceeds, the redeeming factors seem to be further engulfed by the wannabe ghost chick. Plot holes become more frequent. The screenplay is pathetically predictable.

Talking of the cast, the film rests on Vidya Balan and she is a major disappointment (one should thank Priyadarshan for that). Even though I hadn't seen the complete original Malayalam version, I saw the final dance sequence performed by Shobana (who danced very well and looked frightening). Vidya looked hilarious (obviously that wasn't the intention) and unfortunately her dance lacked both fire and grace. In the pre-interval scenes she provides more unintentionally funny moments by screaming. There is one particular scene which was similar to a scene in Ram Gopal Verma's 'Bhoot' and I noticed how Urmila Matondkar brilliantly pulled off the metamorphosing expressions and how miserable Vidya did that.

Amisha Patel who's supposed to be some kind of innocent girl, is both wooden and hamming (of course not at the same time). One does wonder whether her character really is nuts. Shiny Ahuja is completely wasted. Compared to his performance in 'Life in a Metro' where he had a small (but meaty) role, here his role is nothing out of the ordinary. The actor sadly doesn't get any scope. Paresh Rawal is very annoying.

Rajpal Yadav is hilarious. He's definitely one of the more talented comedians today. Other than Mr. Yadav, it is Akshay Kumar who delivers a decent performance. He's unimpressive in the non-comedic scenes (thanks to the abysmal writing) but he excels in the comedy. I liked it that he brings humour to his psychiatrist character. A caricature psychiatrist would have been one that's serious (one with no sense of humour obviously) and overly enthusiastic about treatment and diagnosis.

However, Akshay's comedic scenes (which Priyadarshan probably intended to use as a gap filler) divert the film from being a thriller/horror (or whatever it tried to be). Yet, in a poorly made film, it's nice to see something that could be of a slightly redeeming factor. But then again, these are no more than a few scenes so forget about redemption.

The songs are forgettable. The last song in the pre-climax (if you even call that a climax) is deafeningly bad.

So, except for Rajpal Yadav and Akshay Kumar, there's nothing worthwhile about 'Bhool Bulaiyaa' which should have been more suitably titled 'Bhool Jaa iss Bullcrap Ko'.