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I have learned that a good colourful „silly“ masalla is one of the best things that can happen if you feel blue or need to relax. With an intention to be entertained and setting into my graciously forgiving mood I started watching the latest Akshay Kumar release, that same actor whom I didn´t mind in Rowdy Rathore and thought him pure adorable in OMG Oh My God earlier in 2012. I understand „Khiladi“ is a trademark for him, but from what I have understood, the original „Khiladi“ series were thrillers (?), which this one is anything but, which, after all, was clear from the posters and promos. I had next to no expectations of the film and thought that I could pretty much predict the whole thing. I was wrong.

Akshay Kumar (because his filmy name is too long and impossible to spell correctly for me) is from a Punjab family, into which nobody wants to marry their daughters – because they are goondas, you see (in what way is never really shown), and so they have to marry women from other nations (because obviously those don´t care about your background). But Akshay would really like an Indian girl, unfortunatelly his proposals are being rejected one by one. 

Enter Mansukh, a son of a match-maker, recently thrown out from home for ruining his father´s reputation, and hired (more by mistake than anyhting else) to find a groom for Indu, sister of Mumbai Don TT (Mithun Chakraborty). Indu is a spoiled brat who already has a boyfriend, but he is in jail and every single time he is to be released something or the other happens which prolongs his stay behind bars. Indu is patient, but her time is running out, because Mansukh immeditelly has a groom for her in mind – Akshay, who just like ghosts and true pyaar cannot be seen when he moves quickly (not sure that is the best news you can give a bride … but...ehmm... well.....). However Mansukh doesn´t know Akshay is not a policeman, and neither are his relatives, as they claim to be. And to top it he has to lie to them about the girl´s family, and also makes Mithun and his household members of a Mumbai police squad.

After the first 40 or so minutes I was ready to love the movie. It felt funny. Silly, sure, but genuinely funny. Then something happened, fun disappeared, and it just slowly became boring. Akshay is being Akshay, that one who absolutely needs to stop doing films like this for several more years to come. Seriously. Rowdy Rathore, Joker and Khiladi may have had different plotlines and presented him as three different people, but he presented all that in the exact same way, so much you can hardly find any difference between them. His best performance of 2012 thus remains supporting role in OMG Oh My God, any by far it was also the best out of five films he gave us last year.

I always welcome any glimpse of „old“ stars like Mithun Chakraborthy and Raj Babbar, who are largely in the shadows these days, but rarely they get a role that would do them justice in any way. I think the last time I saw Mithun doing something that mattered was in Guru. Asin is as much a leading lady as Bharti Singh (who has short and completely useless subplot to handle). I keep hearing about how amazing she she in her Southern films, and can´t just stop wondering why she is satisfied with playing „bushes in the back“, because that is pretty much everything she has done in Bollywood so far. She doesn´t even have much of a screen presence (like for example another girl, who needs to do more substantial roles – Sonakshi Sinha), and you just couldn´t care about her less.

That characters are sketchy, music bad, jokes over the top and double standarts for men and women regarding age as obvious as ever (27 years old Asin is romancing 45 years old Akshay while being 62 years old Mithun´s sister).... all that I could live with quite well, if only it was a laugh-riot. It wasn´t. Khiladi 876 is actually so forgettable I cannot even recommend it.

Bol Bachchan is a really phunny philm. Working with ever popular formula of lies, lies and more lies creating confusion and more confusion, very much like another phunny philm earlier this year (the one about a house being full), but it actually has a bit of a plot and smaller number of characters which makes it less memory demanding.

Abbas and Sania, a Muslim brother and sister, are forced to take refuge with a family friend in a small town, which is prospering under landlord Prithviraj, a man of muscles and a heart that loves truth above everything else. Try to lie to him even a little and thou shalt know what pain is. Then again this is all rather unfortunate since he is very easy to lie to, as Abbas finds out soon enough, as circumstances make him to do just that. And later he is too scared of Prithviraj and starts making more and more lies, which are good enough to satisfy the landlord, but at the same time give a terrible headache to Abbas, Sania and a whole bunch of other people who get involved. A concept very simple, but executed with lots of freshness (and did that stage play near the end crack me up).

Abhishek Bachchan redeemed himself after the atrocity he served us this January and confirmed yet again he is a very pleasant actor who needs to be presented more as a common man than a genius super-cop/super-con. Also multistarrers do him good, at least those that have another strong performer (here it is Ajay Devgn) to pretty much „complete“ him on screen (how effin´ good they both looked beating up an army of goondas – twice - without even getting sweat stains?). Ajay has always been projected more as an action hero, at least as far as I know, but lately he has been using his great comic sense as well, and as an English-loving yet totally messing up meaning of words and thus delivering some hilarious one-liners (A brother in need is a sister indeed! My eyes have fallen from my face!) macho landlord he rules. For me he stole the show, though Abhishek too has moments of utter brilliance. His notorious gay act, that worked for him so much in Dostana, and actually seems to be his most popular avatar (ouch!), is used here as well, then again it is left soon enough not to weary off. Aided in comedy also by Krushna Abhishek (forever known to me as Govinda´s nephew) and other minor character artists, all the protagonists make sure your sides are hurting from all the laughs even before the interval. 

Asin and Prachi both are presented beautifully, but Asin, as gorgeous as she undoubtedly is, lacks „it“. She has a great beauty, yet no personality on screen, nothing that would catch your eye as soon as she is not the only one in the frame. She does decent, but I´m becoming a bit tired of her decent, because apart from Ghajini that is all she has shown so far. She has not one role that would allow her to perform (and evolve), she seems to be choosing only films where starcast pretty much guarantees a hit. You cannot really talk about a chemistry between the girls and their romantic interests in the movie – well, not between Asin and Ajay (yep yep... age difference too visible – and I am afraid this complaint is going to be more and more frequent in my reviews concerning films by Mr. Devgn, Mr. Kumar and also the Khans etc), fortunatelly Ajay and Abhishek have enough chemistry to make it work.

It could have been 30 minutes shorter, because like this it was getting a bit wearisome at one point, and as a girl I´m not really into the obligatory car porn Rohit Shetty enjoys so much. There are only three songs – two lovey-dovey ones that I really liked and enjoyed, and the one playing during the opening credits and featuring none other than Amitabh Bachchan, which obviously has no other point than to boost his son´s movie at least a little with his legendary status. And I didn´t get why they were jumping out of huge Fabergé eggs either.

If I should sum it up, Bol Bachchan is a fun ride with a heart.