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| Cast: Akshay Kumar, Vidya Balan, Shiny Ahuja, Amisha Patel, Paresh Rawal and Rajpal Yadav | | Director: Priyadarshan | | Producer: Bhushan Kumar/Krishan Kumar |
Anupama Chopra, Consulting Editor, Films
Bhool Bhulaiyaa is a remake of the 1993 Malayalam blockbuster Manichitratzu. Priyadarshan was once an assistant to director Fazil and he has faithfully adapted Fazil's film, scene by scene. In fact at one point, both Mohanlal and Akshay Kumar, playing psychiatrists, break into almost the same English dialogue-I'm going to break all conventional boundaries of psychiatry.
What the psychiatrists are attempting is to unravel the mysterious happenings in a large, ancient residence, in which, once upon a time a nobleman imprisoned a beautiful dancer, beheaded her lover and was forcibly going to marry her but she committed suicide.
Her beleaguered soul seems to be hovering around so crockery shatters by it self, people are inexplicably injured and of course the sound of gunghroos is heard all night.
Eddie Murphy used to do this great comic riff about why you never see Black people in a horror movie. Because, he said, black people are too smart. As soon as the first door creaks, they'll get the hell out of there.
Which is what the America-returned couple in Bhool Bhuliya should have done. But despite firm warnings, Siddharth and Avni, played by Shiney Ahuja and Vidya Balan, persist on staying and straying into locked rooms.
Manichitratazu had realistic textures. The house was an ominous, labyrinthine structure, which seemed genuinely creepy. Here it becomes a palace, which is supposedly in Varanasi but looks more like Rajasthan.
The corridors are all from City Palace in Jaipur. Priyadarshan creates a comic book atmosphere, in which nothing can be taken too seriously. He described the movie as Hera Pheri meets Bhoot but there isn't one terrifying moment here.
The comedy is Priyan's trademark loud humor with Paresh Rawal and Rajpal Yadav. Still it keeps the first half of the film humming nicely. But the pace drops alarmingly in the second half. There are long, verbose explanations about what is going on - the psychiatrist diagnoses it as personality identity disorder but honestly it looks more like the Linda-Blair-from-Exorcist syndrome.
Shiney Ahuja screams too much but Akshay Kumar and Vidya Balan hold the film together. Vidya can't match the dancing prowess of Shobana in the original but she looks great and is convincing.
What you get then is an intermittently engaging entertainer. It isn't very scary or very funny. It is, as we say in Mumbai, time-pass.
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Surfer Speaks....
As the name of movie displays that about the theme of the film.bhool bhulaiyaa is full of ghostly drama and the director also mixes it with comedy and tragedy.actress vidya baalan effectively played her role of avni and manjulika 'the revengeful soul of a bengali dancer'.akshay once again played his role very efficiently.his acting is full of experience and maturity.paresh raval and rajpal yadav also contributed well.amisha patel and shiney ahuja is not so impressive but they fit in their roles.music once again supported well to the movie. -- vijay (vijay_journalist@yahoo.co.in)
The subjectof this film is entirely different.The acting of akshay is very much impressive with the mixture of comedy and seriousness.The language used in this film gives a new touch and vidya plays her role very well.Amisha also give her a good performance. -- aman (amancheema21@yahoo.com)
it was fultoo timepass movie except for vidyablab acting which made my 2yr old son cry -- sarah (checkfor_mag@yahoo.co.in)
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