Review: Bhool Chuk Maaf Wallows In A Welter Of Errors
New Delhi:
Cobbling together rough and random elements from a mystifying mish-mash of genres, this Maddock Films dramedy seeks to achieve what the banner did in the recent past with a blend of horror and humour in Stree and its sequel, the biggest hit of actor Rajkummar Rao’s career.
As an absurd caper playing out in the realms of fantasy and in the bustling streets, ghats and marketplaces of Banaras, it isn’t madcap enough. And as a time-loop comedy, it goes completely overboard with its central premise without being able to create a logical context for the perplexing goings-on in the life of a lad trapped in a limbo.
It isn’t only owing to its outlandish plot that Bhool Chuk Maaf is a tad difficult to comprehend and decipher. It goes round and round in circles. What that leads to isn’t a pretty sight despite the energy that Rajkummar Rao packs into the lead performance and the steady support that Wamiqa Gabbi extends to him.
The lead pair does its best to lift the film out of its wobbly ways, but only with sporadic success. Bhool Chuk Maaf also has the services of a bunch of other able actors whose sense of comic timing is flawless. However, the script written by director Karan Sharma is way too contrived and all over the place to make the most of the presence of the likes of Seema Pahwa, Raghubir Yadav, Sanjay Mishra (in a special appearance) and Ishtiyak Khan.
Notwithstanding the limited opportunities granted to them, these actors, especially Pahwa as the hero’s mother and Mishra as an avuncular and smarmy employment broker, add some superficial sparkle to the proceedings. But what the film needed much more of was a sturdier narrative spine.
The tone of the film is terribly erratic. Not only is it generally unfunny, but it also oscillates awkwardly between the droll and the solemn. Romantic moments and familial clashes are interspersed with religious homilies as the baffled male protagonist tries to figure out why his life has screeched to a standstill. He seeks divine intervention and vows to do a good deed if his wish is granted. But when the time comes for him to fulfil his pledge, he lets things drift.
The film’s writer, on his part, is in the same boat. He is equally nonplussed about how to steer the plot forward. When it flounders, the screenplay comes up with gratuitous twists that only weaken the film further. Bhool Chuk Maaf, like its male protagonist, looks in vain for solid ground to stand on but only manages to find terribly slippery slopes that can take it only in one direction – down.
Riddled with holes, the film wallows in a welter of errors that are beyond comprehension and, at times, beyond the threshold of tolerance. The vacuity at the core of the plot obviates the possibility of the bizarre assuming serviceable proportions.
Rajkummar Rao is Banaras lad Ranjan Tiwari. He is desperate for a government job because he is even more desperate to marry his girlfriend Titli Mishra (Gabbi). While the Ranjan-Titli love story is a steady affair, stable employment for a boy of his ilk is difficult to come by.
Titli’s father (Zakir Hussain) gives Ranjan two months to find a job or else abandon all thoughts of marrying his daughter. Ranjan and a pal he calls Mama (Ishtiyak Khan) find their way a middleman, Bhagwan Das (Sanjay Mishra), who demands his pound of flesh and then vanishes with the money the groom-to-be coughs up a bribe.
Eventually, when all the obstacles in his way have been surmounted and the wedding day is fixed, Ranjan runs into an inexplicable wall on the eve of the marriage. The appointed day never dawns and, to his bewilderment, he is dragged through the haldi ceremony again and again.
The plot has a slew of interesting characters but none of them evolves into figures with believable contexts and traits. Especially shortchanged is Ranjan’s mother, who sells pickles for a living and keeps the family together. In the bargain, the lady has to reckon with a feckless husband (Raghubir Yadav) and a son for whom tomorrow never comes.
The men in the Tiwari home sit around on the terrace drinking with their friends unmindful of the troubles that lie ahead. When the matriarch yells at them and reminds them of the responsibilities enjoined upon them by society, Ranjan’s father pipes up: it’s Sunday, samaaj chutti pe hain.
Moreover, the girl in Ranjan’s life is no pushover, certainly not of the kind that her would-be husband is. She is a tough cookie who knows how to make her way out of tricky situations. However, the problem that besets Ranjan foxes her totally. He goes back and forth between the beginning and the end of a single day, and not even Titli can help him out of the jam.
Seen through cinematographer Sudeep Chatterjee’s fluid camera, Banaras is a place full of beauty and vitality bordering on the chaotic. The setting overwhelms the frames especially because the tableaux that the director and his actors create in these spaces feel overly stale and laboured.
Bhool Chuk Maaf throws in a “surprise” bachelor party that springs no surprise – it serves as a pretext for a truncated item number that is followed by the pandemonium that a day that refuses to end unleashes.
The biggest problem with Bhool Chuk Maaf is that it rides on a single, feeble idea that the makers are unable to expand into a passably comic tale of a wedding interrupted. The film’s genre-bending ambitions far outweigh the creative means at its disposal. The result is a plethora of bhool chuk that is difficult to gloss over, let alone pardon.
