Phone Bhoot Is A Very Sad Comment On The State of  Mainstream Cinema

Going by what we see in the trailer of Phone Bhoot  it is hard to believe that this is  supposed to be funny. It is even harder  to believe that the trailer comes from the house of excellence  Excel Entertainment who once  gave us  Dil Chahta  Hai,Luck By Chance,  Zindagi Na Milegi Dobaara and Dil Dhadakne Do.Well, okay, the last name doesn’t exactly fire the imagination with complimentary  thoughts. But compared with the  non-happening  humour evident in the  trailer  of  Phone  Bhoot  , Dil  Dhadakne Do  was  a classic.

Of course I may be  wrong , and for all we know the  trailer may inadvertently have given us  the worst  scenes  and dialogues  of the film. But  judging by what we are given  it looks pretty bleak  and disengaging  to me.Honestly, whoever wrote this  comedy-horror didn’t know the difference  between  the two genres.

To sum  up the plot, Siddhant Chaturvedi(whom Katrina keeps calling Siddharth in all her interviews,maybe it’s the Malhotra connection or maybe she just can’t tell the  difference) and Ishaan Khattar are two  out-of-luck ghostbusters trying to find that one case of  bhoot-policing that would change their luck.

Enter Katrina declaring to the  boys that  there is  a ghost in the room.

‘Kidhar Hai?’ the boys peer beyond Katrina.

“Yahan, Bhootni ke,” retorts Katrina.

 Now if  you now Katrina’s  Hindi pronunciation you would know that  ‘Bhootni’comes out sounding  like ‘chutney’ so the joke if one may call it that, is quite  removed from what is intended.

 The funniest  (unintended) joke  in  the Phone Bhoot trailer is, Katrina reprimanding  the seasoned  Sheeba  Chadha for her poor Hindi. I am sure there are  many more from where that came. And it is really very sad  .

The mixture of horror and  comedy just doesn’t  work in the trailer,not because the  mix is incurably  incompatible  but because in this trailer  the  horror is  not  scary and the comedy is  not funny.

Siddhant Chaturvedi and Ishaan Khattar  can be really funny boys together: one can see they have  really good comic timing. But this is  not the place to  use  that  comic timing. Phone Bhoot is so aspirational  it makes the  contestants on  Comedy Circus  look like members  of Kapil Sharma’s team. There is hardly a  moment here  in the trailer worth  embracing let alone celebrating.

 Funnier than the  Phone Bhoot trailer is an interview I  saw where  Chaturvedi and Khattar were mock-sidelined  in favour of Katrina. As the  boys mock-fumed I wished the  trailer was even half as funny as  the interview.