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Bhootnath: Really scary

By: Santosh :+: Under: Movies, Review
On: ⋅ May 15, 2008 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment
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Be scared of the latest Bollywood movie, Bhootnath ….. real scared. Be scared because you have to pay real money for the ticket.

Regarding, Bhootnath. I watch desi movies in theaters because I get so few of them. Normally I don’t read reviews or hype, so I can form my own opinions. Ditto for Bhootnath, I went in with zero background on the movie. I decided to use this movie to experiment with some live blogging on my now almost defunct blog. The way this works is - I text (SMS, if you will) Utterz.com and they automatically post it to my wordpress blog.

Here’s a sampling of my text messages/live posts:
45 minutes into the movie:

bhootnath. good intro. annoying children 1st hour

About 1 hour 15 minutes into the movie:

bhootnath. 1st half extremely boring. movie 4 kids. couple of lol moments. kid falling down stairs highlight of 1st half.

After intermission:

bhoot’s son is 1 of us evil nris. wonderful.

End:

end of movie. bhoot has attained salvation and so have I. juhi is (politically incorrect term for hot)

There is really not much more to say about this movie. Bollywood has a special knack of taking cute kids and turning them into these really annoying entities, which for some inexplicable reason Bollywood finds “cute”. Don’t quote me on this but Bhootnath is most likely a kids movie. At least in the first half. And a NRI family drama/religious salvation experience in the second half. It’s a rehash of Casper the friendly ghost with you-know-who replacing Casper.

Regarding music/songs/dance, they are randomly inserted, as always. No culture police here but every single song, while neatly choreographed, blatantly apes the American way of life - American football, baseball, urban clothing - perhaps a reflection of current society. There is a way of integrating the good of both without blindly aping and that escapes most, but I digress.

This is strictly anecdotal from what I witnessed. If you have kids they may find this movie entertaining in the first half. But they will definitely find the second half boring, the few kids in the theater were either sleeping or begging their parents to take them home 15-20 minutes into the second half. If you are an adult you may find the movie boring in the 1st half and may find the second half interesting, if NRI family dramas about the umbilical cord syndrome (NRI kids abandoning parents in India) are your thing.

I often get annoying email forwards that among other things credit India with inventing the number “Zero”. This is just my personal opinion, there are exactly that many redeeming moments in Bhootnath, contrary to what you may read in other reviews. What movie critics define as redeeming moments is simply people trying hard to laugh or be charmed because they paid real money for the movie. A kid’s movie would’ve been cool, there is a serious dearth of those in Indian cinema. A family drama while commonplace would’ve at least been expected. They tried to make a movie for everyone, instead they made one for no one. If your kid wants to absolutely watch this movie, get a pirated DVD (not that I condone piracy but I condone money wastage even less) from your local Indian grocery store and excuse yourself while your kid tortures himself/herself. Again just my personal opinion, but, stay away from Bhootnath, its really scary - the prospect of sitting through this movie.

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