Bumboo

Indian Express Ratings:*

‘L’emmerdeur’ means a pain in the nether back region of the body. That’s delicately put. But the makers of ‘Bumboo’,who’ve based their film on the French comedy ‘L’emmerdeur’ (written and directed by Francis Veber who also did ‘La Diner De Cons,’ which was re-made,successfully,into ‘Bheja Fry’) display no such squeamishness as they go about telling us how life is such a pain in the ‘a**’,and that whatever we do,we can’t escape it.

A fraudster is being transported to a Goa court. A killer is positioned in a high window in a hotel,all the better to blow his (the scamster’s) head off. An over-attentive bellboy is making a nuisance of himself. The bad guys who’ve taken the contract out are heading towards the spot. A cameraman with a broken marriage and a shaky tripod is also lurking in the vicinity.

This may have been a good idea in the original. In the copy,an official Indo-French collaboration,it turns out to be non-stop bilge. Not because it is loud and broad. Movies like ‘Bumboo’ have no business being subtle. But even in the shouting out of lines and dollops of obviousness,there needs to be an overlying sense of fun. Films like these need to be obnoxiously funny,where you laugh because you can’t help it. And that happens too few times.

The cast has clearly been told to yell. So Mangal Singh (Saxena) with his long telescopic rifle,and Suresh Sudhakar,(Dave) SuSu in short,please laugh out loud,compete with each other for decibel levels as they tumble around each other in a hotel room. The scamster is a gross-out,barfing and farting,as he travels in a van full of commandos to Goa. Why commandos? Don’t ask. The bellboy’s (Mishra) job is to pop into rooms and ask people if they are all right even if they are stringing themselves up by a rope. SuSu tries this out in the hope that his wife (Thakkar) will come back. Said wife is a well-stacked person,which we can see because she is mostly clad in bikinis. It is Goa,see?

And of course,a psychiatrist is referred to as a ‘paagalon ka doctor’.

shubhra.gupta@expressindia.com