Bhool Bhulaiya 2 Movie Review: Kartik Aaryan Keeps The Proceedings Perky

Bhool Bhulaiya 2

Starring Tabu,Kartik Aaryan,Kiara Advani,Rajpal Yadav

Directed by Anees Bazmi

Rating: ***

You know what you are  getting into when  you sign up for this. So  you might as well  lie back and enjoy  it. Bhool Bhulaiya 2  proceeds with the same line of thought that has manoeuvred  Anees Bazmi’s mirth yatra  through decades  of  lowbrow entertainment.

Bazmi is a direct descendent  of  Priyadarshan’s school  of comedy: a huge unwieldy cast brought into a  kind of tightly-knit  control by a writing that invites buffoonery and  incites titters  from the audience.

Ask anyone why they  have so much fun in a Bazmi  burlesque, and they will tell you, it’s because  it isn’t taken  to be taken  seriously. Neither is a monkey doing tricks at the roadside.Even  ‘serious’ actor Tabu dips into the droll drum with lipsmacking relish.Without  giving away too  much  of the plot, suffice it to say that Tabu plays  two sisters one  nice and  friendly the other  bloody evil.

I am afraid Tabu is like  a fish out of water in the  slinky and sly screenplay(Aakash  Kaushik) which  covers the wide spectrum from humour to horror with a death-defying audacity. In the  process of unveiling what seems  like a fairly logical plot progression since  the ghost Manjulika created  havoc in the haveli  17 years ago, Bhool Bhulaiya gets all its  zigzaggy steps right  .

Bazmi enters  the haveli of hilarity with tremendous  confidence. It is an arrogant adventure buttressed  by some fine cinematography(Manu Anand)  underlined  by a sense  of fun,mostly  converging on Kartik Aaryan’s considerable comic acumen .He is constantly entertaining, even when the  screenplay ceases to be  so.

There  is this whole deeply awkward episode where Kartik’s character   Ruhaan(rooh…Ruhan…get it) pretends  to be taken over by Manjulika’s spirit.

More evil than Manjulika  is the sloppy sagging writing which very often comes in the way  of the film’s otherwise-clenched storytelling. Another problem here is that the characters  in the first Bhool Bhulaiya film which came fifteen  years ago are  not  known to  today’s average 20-something   moviegoer. The  film swarms  with people from the earlier film like  wedding crashers. This time they don’t succeed in taking the plot wherever  it hasn’t reached before.

But there is  always Kartik, goofily grinning his way into what is clearly  a slice-of-‘laugh’ gambit, and seemingly successful one at that. Some of  the supporting cast is enjoyable. Actors  like Sanjay Mishra, Rajpal Yadav, Rajesh Verma  and the neglected Ashwini Kalsekar can sail  through this chaotic  kingdom  of mirth and mayhem with their eyes closed.

But  my sympathies  to Amar Upadhyay who once was a  star . From soap he swings tragically into sop with a role that  requires him to look vacantly  into the  air as though he  had just seen a  ghost. It is another  matter that he has.

Kiara Advani’s character  is supposed to be dead at  the start of  the  film. Dead or alive, the character makes no  difference to the  screenplay. Tabu’s character does make a difference, both  living and dead.Welcome to the world where  witticism  is a  catchphrase and fun is  to be had only if you forget to be judgemental. Even a  monkey performing  tricks at the roadside  merits  laughter.