‘Bhooth Bangla’
Dir: Priyadarshan
Actors: Akshay Kumar, Tabu, Wamiqa Gabbi, Paresh Rawal, Asrani, Rajpal Yadav
Rating: 3/5

Did we need three hours to tell this story? That was my first thought after watching the sparsely funny, slightly lazy Bhooth Bangla. Going into it, we knew that director Priyadarshan has the knack to extract the best out of Akshay Kumar. But that’s the best bit of this film. He has aced the humour. It’s silly in parts, but effectively extracts chuckles. However, the fatal flaw of this film is that it suffers from a Bhool Bhulaiyaa (2007) hangover.

Given that the superstar-director jodi brought to Bollywood its recent favourite fad — horror-comedy — way back in 2007 with the Vidya Balan-starrer, the expectation of recreating the same has become their biggest burden. You see similar tropes — a beautiful, forbidden bangla, local lore, Ashtami, choreographed dance pieces, a million bats, a rat running through the piano’s keys, and Rajpal Yadav parroting lines from the original. There is far too much in here that reminds you of Bhool Bhulaiyaa, mixed with a strange subplot about ritual killing.