Bhool Chuk Maaf Review

Picture this: you are at a stand-up comedy show, you are having fun, the comic is killing it. For his final act, he has set up an elaborate joke and is coming up to the punchline, when - poof - he disappears in a puff of smoke, and in his stead, holding the mic, is your high school teacher who begins delivering a dry civics lesson.

This scenario, more or less, sums up the discombobulating experience of watching Bhool Chuk Maaf, a supposed-to-be comedy that sours into a painful lecture on morality, before ending in a fourth-wall-breaking dialogue by the protagonist reminding us - his audience of no-gooders, I suppose? - to "do good in this world without expecting anything in return". Okay. Thank you, teacher.

How does a slapstick comedy about a guy stuck in a time loop end up becoming a preachy bore? With this nasty, unfortunately fashionable, screenplay trick: use comedy as a Trojan horse to divert our attention and sneak-attack us with a social message. This, coming from the mecca of Bollywood comedy, Maddock Films (the Stree series, Munjya), is a bit of a letdown.

For the better part of the film (pun intended), we are tickled by protagonist Ranjan (Rajkummar Rao), his firecracker of a girlfriend Titli (Wamiqa Gabbi), and their lovably loud families as they bicker over the couple's wedding. It is all fun and games when Ranjan bounces around Banaras with his bestie (Ishtiyak Khan), trying to secure a government job - this job being the one condition on which Titli's obstinate father agrees to their union.

A bribe and a prayer later, he lands one. The real comedy begins when Ranjan wakes up on the day of his wedding to discover that he is reliving the previous day, stuck in a never-ending time loop that he cannot figure a way out of.

Almost any other kind of third act - a farce, a tragedy, even a whimper - would have played better than what writer-director Karan Sharma gives us. Which is a ludicrously vague social message melodrama about any one of these fuzzy ideas: "doing the right thing", "not accepting bribes", "not being corrupt". And it is done in the most on-the-nose fashion. Sanjay Mishra, who plays the enigmatic and eccentric character of Bhagwan Das, the man who secures Ranjan's government job, is roped in to be the bearer of this message in the film's grandstanding climax.

The writing ties itself into knots trying to accommodate the film's contradictory goals. It wants us to laugh at the scenes where Ranjan is monkeying around for a government job, but in the end, its finger-wagging lecture shames us for laughing and cheering for Ranjan taking a bribe. Ultimately, Ranjan's climactic change of heart is as bizarre as having the hero of an action film walk into the finale, lay down his weapons, and apologise for the environmental pollution caused by his stunts.

The time-loop aspect is nothing more than a gimmick, albeit one that is effectively directed. Karan Sharma, in fact, proves to be far more capable than his short filmography would have you believe (two TV series and a short film). The film's casting is a fabulously successful mix of mainstream stars and lesser-known gems like Raghubir Yadav and Seema Pahwa, who play Ranjan's parents. And Karan is able to herd them in group scenes with cross-cutting dialogue with a sure-handedness that is rare, particularly in comedy.

Perhaps this potent mix of talents is why the disappointment in the messy third act is felt even more acutely. With a better story, Titli could have become an iconic character - the feisty girlfriend who bullies her lover but loves him all the same. Wamiqa Gabbi lights up the screen and goes toe-to-toe with Rajkummar's comedic chops. Their chemistry is half the reason the film almost works, but when Titli is written out of the second half, it starts to fall apart.

Bhool Chuk Maaf has the distinct signs of a good script that got progressively worse with every iteration. The signs are in the oddly-placed, half-heartedly edited item song, in the forgotten female lead, and most of all in the soap-opera-like finale that feels like it belongs in a different kind of film. As if comedy alone is too frivolous a reason to make a film, Bhool Chuk Maaf tacks on a social message that we couldn't care less about. Filmmakers would do well to remember: just because we look up at the big screen doesn't mean we want to be talked down to.