Go Goa Gone: 10 years later, not all films age well

Go Goa Gone is the story of three friends, Hardik (Kunal Kemmu), Luv (Vir Das) and Bunny (Anand Tiwari), who share a flat in Mumbai. Hardik only cares about cigarettes, drugs, alcohol and women. Luv is torn between being a good man and mending his broken heart as per Hardik’s (questionable) advice. Bunny is the ideal fit in the corporate world who takes his PowerPoint presentations seriously. What they are, basically, are corporate zombies who will meet with drug-addled zombies at a rave party on a picturesque deserted island in Goa.

After this rave party, all they do is rescue themselves from the attack of zombies with the help of Russian mafioso Boris (Saif Ali Khan), while I scourged for the rare jokes amid this snoozefest. Filled with predictability that comes with every zombie movie, there is nothing more to the film beyond this one paragraph sum-up.

Actor Puja Gupta is the obligatory female addition to this group of boys. Of course, it would be difficult to crack those sleazy jokes without a girl in sight.

Those aware of Raj and DK’s distinct style of filmmaking know that they are the masters of crafting amazing tales that keep you engaged throughout. But with Go Goa Gone, they have gone terribly wrong. The wafer-thin plot, which vanishes as second half begins, made me wonder — had it been better if Go Goa Gone was a short film instead of a pointlessly stretched full-length feature film? Maybe the best thing about the film is its runtime of one hour and forty minutes because I couldn’t have survived a single second more of it. Although the climax is written in a way to create laughs and chills in equal measure, the whole scenario that plays on a beach and wilderness of Goa seems rather long and tedious.

What drags the film further is the tone-deaf performance of its entire cast, including Saif. Kunal Kemmu is the best thing about Go Goa Gone. Moments where I giggled (and those can be counted on fingers) involved Kemmu — Puja Gupta is named Luna for obvious reasons but the actor makes even those jokes work: him talking to God and making promises we know he won’t keep was funny too. When he dances around trees and has a romantic moment with a zombie was a perfect pun on the Bollywood trope of hero and heroine romancing in the jungles. And, from the moment I knew his name is Hardik, I knew what’s the joke.

But beyond his one-liners, the film felt as lifeless as the undead it features. In various instances, Bunny asks in the film, “What do we know? What have we learnt?” After watching Go Goa Gone, I know I won’t ever watch it again and I have learnt every film doesn’t age well.