Phone Bhoot is a very sad comment on the state of mainstream cinema

Going by what we see in the trailer of Phone Bhoot, it is hard to believe that this is supposed to be funny. It is even harder to believe that the trailer comes from the house of excellence  Excel Entertainment, that once gave us Dil Chahta Hai, Luck By Chance, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara and Dil Dhadakne Do. Well, okay, the last name doesn’t exactly fire the imagination with complimentary thoughts. But compared with the non-happening humour evident in the  trailer of Phone Bhoot, Dil Dhadakne Do was a classic.

Of course, I may be wrong, and for all we know, the trailer may inadvertently have given us  the worst scenes and dialogues of the film. But judging by what we are given, it looks pretty bleak and disengaging to me. Honestly, whoever wrote this comedy-horror didn’t know the difference between the two genres.

To sum up the plot, Siddhant Chaturvedi (whom Katrina keeps calling Siddharth in all her interviews, maybe it’s the Malhotra connection or maybe she just can’t tell the difference) and Ishaan Khatter are two  out-of-luck ghostbusters trying to find that one case of bhoot-policing that would change their luck.

Enter Katrina, declaring to the boys that there is a ghost in the room. ‘Kidhar Hai?’ the boys peer beyond Katrina. “Yahan, Bhootni ke,” retorts Katrina.

Now if you now Katrina’s Hindi pronunciation, you would know that ‘Bhootni’ comes out sounding like ‘chutney’, so the joke, if one may call it that, is quite removed from what is intended.

The funniest (unintended) joke in the Phone Bhoot trailer is, Katrina reprimanding the seasoned Sheeba Chadha for her poor Hindi. I am sure there are many more from where that came. And it is really very sad.

The mixture of horror and comedy just doesn’t work in the trailer, not because the mix is incurably incompatible, but because in this trailer, the  horror is not  scary and the comedy is  not funny.

Siddhant Chaturvedi and Ishaan Khatter can be really funny boys together: one can see they have really good comic timing. But this is not the place to use that comic timing. Phone Bhoot is so aspirational, it makes the contestants on Comedy Circus look like members of Kapil Sharma’s team. There is hardly a moment here in the trailer worth embracing, let alone celebrating.

Funnier than the Phone Bhoot trailer is an interview I saw where Chaturvedi and Khatter were mock-sidelined in favour of Katrina. As the boys mock-fumed, I wished the trailer was even half as funny as the interview.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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