Om Bheem Bush Review

Sree Harsha Kanuganti's surreal comedy featuring flirtatious ghosts and charlatan scientists warns, "No Logic, Only Magic". So there is no need to question how an "extracorporal" gun works, or what the smoke of Horny Goat Weed can do to a man's libido. Such funky machines and quack remedies are the specialty of "Bang Bros", a business venture by three conmen, Vinay (Priyadarshi) , Madhav (Rahul Ramakrishna) and Krishna (Sree Vishnu), in which they undertake every dubious activity from treasure hunting and ghost busting to resolving past life karmic debt.

Om Bheem Bush's is an absurd story about these grifters, a hidden treasure guarded by a moody ghost named Sampangi and, if you can believe it, gay rights! As the tagline promises, the writing is free of sense, but don't expect much magic either. Before setting up Bang Bros (a not-so-subtle reference to a porn website), the three friends study Ph D researching topics like "energy balance" and "geophysics of treasure troves" at Legacy University, where their advisor is so crazed by their mischief that he awards them doctorates just to be rid of them. It doesn't take them long to relocate their talents and sell their quacky "A-Z solutions" to gullible folks.

Unhinged dialogues and the slapstick performances set a nonsensical tone from the get go. "You are my mother from another brother," one Bang Bro tells another Bang Bro, and they howl into the night like wolves - one of their gang's rituals. The one-liners are not particularly funny (try rhyming "Sampangi" and "Sandeep Reddy Vanga"), and a lot of the dialogues sound like retorts you might hear at a children's playground. Worse still are the cringe songs featuring skimpy-clothed dancers rubbing against poles, and vocals that call to mind bleating goats.

Not even Sree Vishnu, Darshi and Rahul Ramakrishna, comedic stars in their own right, can escape the stench of the script. Darshi has it the worst. He not only has to perform physical comedy, which he is patently unsuited for, but he has to engage in a crass romance with a buxom lady like he is in a Raghavendra Rao movie from the 90s. Sree Vishnu doesn't fare much better either with his glib joke delivery and his affecting English accent. Only Rahul manages to extract some worthy laughs.

Om Bheem Bush is somewhat redeemed by the climax, though. There is a ghost angle that is both hilarious and dramatic - a laugh-out-loud parody of the ideal Telugu family movie ending that also conveys a progressive social message. You've gotta be grateful when a film is aware of its silliness. Still, the movie is mostly a chaotic mess of one-liners and bad puns that fizzle out of memory minutes after the credits roll.