Bhagam Bhag – Movie Review

Got to watch this Priyadarshan – directed flick a long time after it released. For a comedy, this movie had earned lukewarm reviews and that kept me off from the first three weeks. But after watching it today, I’m thankful that I gave it a miss. For Bhagam Bhag is like a 2-course meal wherein the starters are good and appetising but the main course is stale and tasteless! Forgive the odd comparison but this movie made me feel like that!

It doesn’t have that great a story…a theatre group led by Paresh Rawal has Akshay and Govinda vying for the role of the hero and when a clause is laid out that whoever finds a heroin first will get the hero’s role, they go hammer n’ tongs at finding one. Akshay runs into Lara who has a suicidal tendency. The comedy turns into a murder-mystery in the second half wherein there’s a dead man on the stage floor and our three guys are implicated in it. How they keep escaping from the law and other goons forms the crux of the climax. Whereas the first half is promising and has many comic moments and hilarious dialogues, the second half is too mundane and mostly confusing. In his effort to make it more of a laughathon, Priyadarsan ropes in two sets of people who kinda seem connected to the plot but in reality are not! Shakti Kapoor and his gang of goons scamper after Akshay/Govinda/Paresh for no apparent reason and another gang of drug peddlers involving Sharat Saxena et al think that they are the ‘Indian CID’ and hatch plans to eliminate them. Both these sub-plots are extremely tacky and lame.

Performance-wise, Akshay is competent in a role that he’s played before (HP, PHP, Garam Masala etc) Paresh Rawal is under-utilised whereas Govinda seems completely lost out. Renowned for his comic timing and funny antics & one-liners, he’s reduced to a bumbling moron in this movie. Lara Dutta sleepwalks through the entire movie. Jackie Shroff and Arbaaz Khan play some minor roles. And there is a whole gang of chasers and losers! Not a single performance can be said to be noteworthy. Similar can be said of the music. The movie had only for songs – one each at the beginning and end credits and two on either side of the interval. None of them great shakes! As is the practice in almost all Priyadarshan movies, all characters congregate at a single place at the climax leading to a confusing and funny situation. Herein all of them are stuck atop a fire-engine’s ladder. That scene is an EXACT lift from the 1963 Spencer Tracy movie – Its a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. In fact this movie is a remake of Priyan’s earlier Tamil move (dunno the name). All in all, a lame movie which is OK as long as u don’t see it entirely!

Rating: **

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