Bol Bachchan

Directed by: Rohit Shetty

Starring: Ajay Devgn, Abhishek Bachchan, Asin, Prachi Desai

Released: 2012

Bol Bachchan is a really phunny philm. Working with ever popular formula of lies, lies and more lies creating confusion and more confusion, very much like another phunny philm earlier this year (the one about a house being full), but it actually has a bit of a plot and smaller number of characters which makes it less memory demanding.

Abbas and Sania, a Muslim brother and sister, are forced to take refuge with a family friend in a small town, which is prospering under landlord Prithviraj, a man of muscles and a heart that loves truth above everything else. Try to lie to him even a little and thou shalt know what pain is. Then again this is all rather unfortunate since he is very easy to lie to, as Abbas finds out soon enough, as circumstances make him to do just that. And later he is too scared of Prithviraj and starts making more and more lies, which are good enough to satisfy the landlord, but at the same time give a terrible headache to Abbas, Sania and a whole bunch of other people who get involved. A concept very simple, but executed with lots of freshness (and did that stage play near the end crack me up).

Abhishek Bachchan redeemed himself after the atrocity he served us this January and confirmed yet again he is a very pleasant actor who needs to be presented more as a common man than a genius super-cop/super-con. Also multistarrers do him good, at least those that have another strong performer (here it is Ajay Devgn) to pretty much „complete“ him on screen (how effin´ good they both looked beating up an army of goondas – twice - without even getting sweat stains?). Ajay has always been projected more as an action hero, at least as far as I know, but lately he has been using his great comic sense as well, and as an English-loving yet totally messing up meaning of words and thus delivering some hilarious one-liners (A brother in need is a sister indeed! My eyes have fallen from my face!) macho landlord he rules. For me he stole the show, though Abhishek too has moments of utter brilliance. His notorious gay act, that worked for him so much in Dostana, and actually seems to be his most popular avatar (ouch!), is used here as well, then again it is left soon enough not to weary off. Aided in comedy also by Krushna Abhishek (forever known to me as Govinda´s nephew) and other minor character artists, all the protagonists make sure your sides are hurting from all the laughs even before the interval. 

Asin and Prachi both are presented beautifully, but Asin, as gorgeous as she undoubtedly is, lacks „it“. She has a great beauty, yet no personality on screen, nothing that would catch your eye as soon as she is not the only one in the frame. She does decent, but I´m becoming a bit tired of her decent, because apart from Ghajini that is all she has shown so far. She has not one role that would allow her to perform (and evolve), she seems to be choosing only films where starcast pretty much guarantees a hit. You cannot really talk about a chemistry between the girls and their romantic interests in the movie – well, not between Asin and Ajay (yep yep... age difference too visible – and I am afraid this complaint is going to be more and more frequent in my reviews concerning films by Mr. Devgn, Mr. Kumar and also the Khans etc), fortunatelly Ajay and Abhishek have enough chemistry to make it work.

It could have been 30 minutes shorter, because like this it was getting a bit wearisome at one point, and as a girl I´m not really into the obligatory car porn Rohit Shetty enjoys so much. There are only three songs – two lovey-dovey ones that I really liked and enjoyed, and the one playing during the opening credits and featuring none other than Amitabh Bachchan, which obviously has no other point than to boost his son´s movie at least a little with his legendary status. And I didn´t get why they were jumping out of huge Fabergé eggs either.

If I should sum it up, Bol Bachchan is a fun ride with a heart.