Director: Akashdeep
Cast: Boman Irani, Vir Das, Neha Dhupia, Lisa Haydon, Sanjai Mishra, Johnny Lever, Ram Kapoor, Tinnu Anand, Vijay Raaz
As majority of us expect 2016 to be a year of intense biopics, gripping dramas and jaw-dropping action films, we also hope the comedies that release offer a belly laughing, knee slapping good time. But isn’t the possibility really weak? Totally! For, ‘Kya Kool Hain Hain Hum 3’ and ‘Mastizaade’ that released earlier this year, not only proved to be greatest atrocities cinema has ever unleashed, but also explained what our filmmakers are capable of - especially in the genre of comedy.
While you browse through the list of those 2016 films which you’d like to watch until the credits, we tell you today how ‘Santa Banta Pvt. Ltd.’ will make you feel horrible in its own special, unique way. Having survived over 122 minutes of non-stop crassness, I have to tell you that the film comes up with precisely two laughs.
The film revolves around Santeshwar Singh (Boman Irani) and Banteshwar Singh (Vir Das) - two village idiots from Punjab. They are hired as undercover detectives and special agents, and coincidentally referred to as Santa and Banta. They are flown to Fiji to help the team unearth the whereabouts of an abducted Indian high commissioner.
What follows is a string of strangely ridiculous situations, horrible song sequences, cringe-worthy moments, Santa-Banta conversations that are filled with the stupidest of puns and performances that are simply lazy and horrible.
But what’s even more shocking about ‘Santa Banta Pvt Ltd’ is that actors like Boman Irani, Vir Das and Ram Kapoor decided to do a film that deserves nothing but ridicule. This awful disaster is so bad that the viewers would want to forget about it and move on. Vijay Raaz plays a subdued RAW Agent (Arvind), who presents Santeshwar and Banteshwara as the real secret agents and sends them to Fiji for the rescue operation with the sole aim of making the life of his boss (Tinu Anand) miserable. His one-liners ‘Na jeene ki aarzoo hai, na marne ka khauff. Don’t call on my number, my cell is off’, ‘Nahi Nahi rok le, thoda aur thok le’ and ‘Aapki izzat ki break fail karni thi, kar diya’ brings a few chuckles. Johnny Lever plays Choosa, a Nepali gangster who fails at creating terror, gets mistaken for Bahadur the watchman instead.
The film hangs upon a horribly wafer-thin plot and a loose screenplay. Writers Asad Ajmeri and Pawan Soni obviously don’t know that a script that aspires to the term ‘comedy’ owes the viewers at least one key aspect: laughter. Laden with the so-called ‘jokes’ that are unfunny, lame and lack the element of surprise, the script fails to sustain interest.
As frothy and insubstantial as a soap bubble, ‘Santa Banta Pvt. Ltd’ says a lot about the level of humour that directors like Akashdeep feel Indian viewers have.
Rating: 0.5/5
Comments
0 comment