It’s an Anees Bazmee film, so you will see illogical stuff like white tourists roped in to wear clothes more suited to Goa than a music festival in the snow. When the film started with a ski lift thing and then a sparkly bikini and dreadlocked extras singing a song in a tent, I resigned myself to a ghastly ghostly tale and hoped to drown in a black brew.
Thankfully, when the doors to a locked up Rajasthani haveli opened, hope floated up like hot air… The very pretty Kiara Advani plays Reet Thakur (offers many flashbacks of Hema Malini, plus she’s cute hiding behind dressers and jharokhas and doing the ‘Monjulika’ dance) who has dragged a ‘live for the moment’ Ruhan Randhawa to save her from getting married to someone whom her sister loves.
The Thakur khandan comprises the beard covered Babuji (played by Milind Gunaji), an aunt Anjulika (the magnificent Tabu) and her wheelchair-bound husband (Amar Upadhyay), an uncle (Rajesh Sharma, who probably had the most fun shooting this film!) and various other people. There’s the avaricious pandit (Sanjay Mishra, oh why does this talented man overact?), his wife (Ashwini Kalsekar, someone please write this immensely talented actor a great role!) and his sidekick (Rajpal Yadav, reprising his role from the original movie. Stop him, someone!) who have been fooling the people and the Thakur clan about ghosts and pujas and so on.
Taking advantage of the situation, Reet and Ruhan play the ‘ghost of Monjulika’ trick and keep us entertained for over two and half hours. The writing will still make you cringe because you have learnt not to body-shame kids by name-calling (‘You’re so heavy, even Monjulika got tired of spinning you around’)...
That Tabu is an amazing actor is a given, but with this film she should create a trend with those velvet (?) nightdresses she wears. I am not much of a Kartik Aaryan fan (he grins too much is my complaint!), but after his really cool hate-spouting role in Pyaar Ka PunchNama, he really shines. His comic timing is cool, especially when he wakes up from the ‘Monjulika’ nightmare to see Tabu in front of him.
For someone who thought the forgettable song in the beginning was a nail in the coffin, I found myself humming the ‘Baatein Hain Bhool Bhulaiyaa’ refrain that does not let you forget you are watching a sequel. The background score is incessant but is not overpowering. Thankfully the comic scary sounds and ever-present laugh track in every Bollywood comedy film is absent.
(Kids in the theatre were quite happy to laugh out loud at the Potlu scenes. One giggly kid sitting next to me in the theatre said they watch “Motu-Patlu’ cartoons and it is funnier in the movie to have a large kid being called ‘Patlu’. His mother admonished him, ‘It’s Potlu!’ I facepalmed and continued to watch Kartik Aaryan and Kiara Advani dance to some love song. Had flashbacks of Shahid Kapoor dancing to ‘Saree ke fall sa..’ in the desert with similar props…)
The end is so satisfying, I felt bad for Amar Upadhyay being forced to sleep next to the dreaded ‘Manjulika’...Yes, Kartik Aryan dancing to the famous ‘Aami je tomay’ is a good thing. He’s all arms and legs and the madness is well done. The physical comedy in the film is sometimes cringey (example, Rajpal Yadav hugging a donkey and dressing the poor animal up as one would a woman) but the dialogue has been updated to include Donald Trump… Well tried! But everything and everyone else is left behind each time the Magnificent Tabu shows up on the big screen.
If you have two hours to kill and the summer heat is getting unbearable, get yourself to the theatres. Or if the price of petrol rather than Manjulika is keeping you indoors, then wait for the movie to show up on Netflix.
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