Shakal Pe Mat Ja

Indian Express rating:*

A bunch of youngsters get caught at New Delhi airport with a handycam,a guy who farts,and a string of bad jokes. The cops think they are terrorists. Says one of the foursome,pointing to the camera : ‘yeh documentary ke liye hai’. Says a cop : ‘kaun si mentry?’ Given their tools of mass destruction (I lost count of the number of farts the fat fellow with an accent lets loose,leading to a mass holding of noses),they could very well be. But there’s a bunch of real baddies,and a bomb,and a babe out there. As well as two hours of unbelievably amateurish tripe.

We are more than happy to cut the enthusiastic young lots of slack when it comes to doing fun stuff on screen. But this is college level,wait,school level theatrics. The presence of a little chap with a smart mouth on him only confirms our suspicion that this was written to hoots of hilarity,only it doesn’t translate into any.

This gets us Saurabh Shukla as an ATS (anti-terrorist squad) guy who yells at people to keep it down. AAAaaaawwwwaaaz,pause for dramatic effect,neeeeeeche. In other places he is to be seen ‘interrogating’ suspects. Raghuveer Yadav is your Haryanvi cop (as if to prove that there are no other kinds in Delhi) who’s given a posse of sidekicks to bark at as he goes marching up and down the airport. Poor Zakir Hussain is the worst served. He plays Terror King Omama,presiding over an organization called Albaqayada,whose bumbling foot-soldiers are spread all over the airport in burqas and black robes.

There is a generous sprinkling of the F word,and juvenile phrases : one is unraveled,for those who do not know,as Kilometer Litre Petrol Diesel. Groan.

What was Hrishita Bhatt thinking when she produced this film?

shubhra.gupta@expressindia.com