Tere Bin Laden

Rating:**

Is Osama hiding out in Pakistan? ‘Tere Bin Laden’ talks up the world’s most feared terrorist who pops up every once in a while on news networks,via grainy footage,through a look-alike who has nothing to do with terrorism,and everything to do with chickens. And does it strictly for laughs.

Rookie Pakistani TV reporter Ali ( Ali Zafar) is desperate to get to the United States of America. After every attempt of his fails,he stumbles upon a ‘murgi’ farmer ( Pradhuman Singh) who is a dead ringer for the man gracing the top of every security agency’s wish-list. No one knows if he is dead or alive,but Osama hunting is a cottage industry in places which bristle with bearded mujahideens and AK47s,and blundering American officials : quite appropriately,the film is set in Pakistan.

Apart from Ali and his sidekick,the Case of the Fake Bin Laden involves a hunky radio jockey,a frisky make-up artist,and a stingy TV channel owner with his frumpy wife who takes him veggie shopping when he is not scamming his poor employees. And a beefy American who knows what’s what.

Debut director Abhishek Sharma‘s idea is original and audacious : full marks there. What could be funnier than the world’s most dreaded terrorist’s doppelganger being a bespectacled chicken farmer? Or an American wiseguy fooling fellow countrymen into believing that Bin Laden could have held out a conciliatory hand to them?

But the film isn’t entirely the laugh riot that it sets out to be : the first half is slow and slack. Some of that’s got to do with the lead player’s inability to be nimble : Zafar,a popular Pakistani singer, is pleasant but flat. His companions are much better; Singh, who plays the fake Bin Laden with great comic flair steals the show.

Post interval,things liven up,and the last half hour is what the whole film should have been like : quick on its feet,and zingy.

shubhra.gupta@expressindia.com