Bhootnath

A ghost and a boy: that’s what Bhootnath is about. It would have been a cracker of a ‘family entertainer’ if debutant director Vivek Sharma had held his focus firmly on the main track. And persuaded his producer Ravi Chopra to keep the film at a tight one-and-a-half hours, instead of the stretched-out two-and-a-half.

Young Banku (Aman) comes to live in a haunted house in Goa, with his mom (Juhi). That a Bollywood brat will be called ‘naughty’ by his parents and teachers (how about, for heaven’s sake, a more appropriate word — ‘naughty’ makes you think of Victorian misses giving their nannies a hard time) is a given. Fortunately, Banku walks and talks like a real child, not an automated robot with a sing-song voice, so his chirpy tete-a-tetes with Bhootnath (Amitabh) are amusing, till the novelty starts wearing off.

The film starts off with a smart youthful air, seguing smoothly into the chaar foot do lad and the chhey foot do bhoot bantering about stars in the sky which are really angels, and cavorting on Goan beaches. Long snatches are spent in Banku’s school where a rival needs to be convinced that there is, indeed, a ghost, and a principal who likes gobbling tiffin: but the initial pleasant time-pass feeling, encouraged by the quick edits, gets overpowered when everything starts taking too long.

There are loose ends, unseemly in a well-made film: Rajpal Yadav, who plays a wavering drunk infesting the house suddenly disappears without explanation (what was he doing there in the first place?); Juhi Chawla’s chandelier danglers turn into studs within a sequence, and Amitabh’s Bhootnath cleans up his filthy self inexplicably after he’s befriended by Banku: do ghosts have to be grubby?

And then it comes: post interval, you discover you’ve all along been watching Baaghban 0.2 — the poor ol’ bhoot is actually just a heart-broken father, who’s been let down by a son (Priyanshu), who upped and left for videsh, and never came back. Out come the hankies, and the nostrums. It is, after all, a B R Chopra production: unless you can wring tears, it’s not really a film, right?

The kitty party aunties who swarmed the first-day-first-show were having a grand time, sniffling away. The film has been released to coincide with the summer holidays, so sure, take the kids, and whisk them away swiftly before it gets all too heavy. Before you leave, enjoy some clever special effects, and a nicely-choreographed peppy kiddie rap number. And a sprightly SRK in a walk-on part.

shubhra.gupta@gmail.com