Phone Bhoot
Hindi (Theatres)
Director: Gurmmeet Singh
Cast: Katrina Kaif, Siddhant Chaturvedi, Ishaan Khattar, Sheeba Chaddha
Rating: 1.5/5 stars
Phone Bhoot is about two privileged men, Major (Siddhant Chaturvedi) and Gullu (Ishaan Khatter), who have a penchant for the macabre and convince their parents to spend Rs 5 crore on them in a span of just a few years until their fathers get fed up and insist that they get real jobs.
They decide to prove themselves by launching their ‘dial-a-ghostbuster’ service after Ragini (Katrina Kaif), a ghost, approaches them with this start-up idea.
The movie uses an old Hindi cinema trick in a new setting — to pass off silly humour as comedy — and is a fiasco whose ghosts will haunt the Hindi film industry for a long time.
With its failed gags, dancing ghosts and witches who spout jokes, and nearly no scary element, the film seems tailor-made for children. But to be honest, even they deserve better.
The script is dull and ponderous, focusing too much on the coolness of its protagonists rather than developing them in a way that would make spectators would root for them, thus, failing to keep the audience engaged.
Using advertisements and product placements to substitute for humour is likewise perplexing. It shows how Hindi cinema lacks quality writers.
The makers marketed the film as a ‘horror comedy’, and viewers anticipated jump-scares. In the Western equivalents, the movies may not be as terrifying as they promise to be but they contain a few genuinely shocking sequences that make for a good scare. There were no such instances in this film, which only added to the agony of watching Phone Bhoot. The objectification of women makes matters worse.
One aspect that cannot be ignored is the number of regions represented in a cliched manner in the film. Gullu speaks Tamil, drinks filter coffee, and is a Rajnikanth fan. Major speaks Punjabi, is a lassi drinker, and is a braggart who boasts about his physical strength, only to embarrass himself. The chudail (Sheeba Chaddha) speaks Hindi with a tinge of Bengali accent, and Atmaram (Jackie Shroff) speaks Mumbai’s tapori dialect.
There is nothing extraordinary about Katrina’s role and I am not sure if it warrants a visit to theatres.