Flushed with Humour

CAST: Imran Khan,Vir Das,Kunaal Roy Kapoor,Vijay Raaz,Poorna Jagannathan,Shenaz Treasurywala

Rating: ***

Dilliboys. Three in number. Living it down in a messy room. Getting embroiled with mobsters. Being chased. And chasing. In a nutshell,Delhi Belly. The Delhi part is self-evident. The Belly aspect allows the film to give us a clear,close shot of human excrement,and all the accoutrements thereof: one of the Dilliboys has a bellyache,and out of that arises smell,noise,and ta da,the whole plot of a movie.

Abhinay Deo’s first film Game was beyond terrible,so you wonder who made this film. Is Delhi Belly really Deo’s doing,or his producer Aamir Khan’s,who wraps up this crisp 100-minuter with a crotch thrust that out-thrusts all recent crotches in Bollywood. In any event,crotches and body parts that grow there,hairy butt cracks revealed in all their glory,ladies and gents being pleasured in ways unknown in Bollywood,and non-stop potty humour,are all a big part of Delhi Belly,and the way they are assembled,interspersed with characters having fun,speaking the way you and I do,provide fun. Most of Delhi Belly raises a smile — a few guffaws can be had as well — even if you feel like holding your nose through it.

Tashi,Nitin,Arup (Khan,Kapoor,Das) are not as much as Dilliboys as those in the last Delhi outing Pyaar Ka Punchnama. They are the sort of guys who would be as much at ease in any big metro,doing the sort of jobs (reporting,photographing,creating graphics) that could be theirs in any part of the world. Also,these urban English-speaking types who pepper their speech with the F-word and the c-word coming up against homegrown mobsters who use ma and behen not only as terms of endearment is not entirely new. After a while,the continuous bad tummy rumbles and farts,and the non-stop cussing wears thin. And please,wearing burqas as disguise is not the only way you can have characters on the run in the grungier parts of town,even if you overlay the chase with the ultra-clever,super-catchy Bhaag DK Bose ditty. There are,believe us,other ways.

But we don’t hold it against the film,at least not entirely,because some things make up for it. As Menaka-the-journalist,assured debutant Poorna Jagannathan,is a fairly close approximation of a Dilligirl in the way she dresses (that nose ring is spot on),even though the one time she has to speak Hindi,she gives herself away. What’s nice about the gang,of whom Kapoor is the best,is that they are not trying too hard to be cool. Hurray. And then there’s the terrific Vijay Raaz,who gives the term smart desi-hood a whole new meaning.

shubhra.gupta@expressindia.com