Naansense Hi Naansense
0.5 stars
Mini Review:
Is it a comedy? Is it horror? Is it social drama? Is it funny?
Is it a weird love story? No one quite knows and when
everything is piled on so thick, you begin to wonder as
audience if you have lost your capacity to care. The
background music is ideal for saturday morning cartoons
and is so loud you want to order ear plugs.
At 132.47 minutes, you idly wonder if they would be easily
delivered before you would turn permanently deaf.
Main Review:
When Nanu and his gang (Manu Rishi and two others) kick open
doors and make people sign away their apartments or else. The
‘Or else’ is a girl who looks supremely disinterested, who tears
her sleeve and threatens to complain of assault. The old man
signs the papers. This is meant to be dark comedy. You’re like,
how is this comedic? Khosla Ka Ghosla was dark. This had
better go somewhere. It just goes to an item song happening
at a wedding. Do they get the wedding party to sign papers also?
No. Just an item song.
Suddenly it is dark and they get into a disco, where Nanu (Abhay
Deol) picks up a girl and makes out with her in the car (they
couldn’t go back to that apartment they appropriated?). And when
morning comes, he drives and witnesses and accident. He picks
up the girl (totally out of character for a thug, but he has a golden
heart I suppose) who smiles so much, you feel a horror film
come on.
The girl becomes a bhootni (blue paint on her body, tattered
dress, and an ability to live in the chimney) and haunts Nanu,
preventing him from drinking beer and even cleaning up his messy
house. Before you can say, ‘Why is she moralistic and
judgemental?’ or ‘She cleans home? Then let her haunt mine!’
Nanu lives in a building where there’s a lad who extorts money,
has a security guard who drinks and sleeps on the job, neighbor
who beats his wife, weird neighbors (Brijendra Kala and his wife)
who have a mentally disabled daughter called Phantom who plays
with a red ball in the open landing space on the 5th floor. Why is
she called Phantom? Does she not exist? But the story gets into
the funny haunting which involves Manu Rishi stripping to his
boxers and then being hung upside down mid air. The comic
background score tells us that we are supposed to laugh. But
we’re wondering why daddy of bhootni (Rajesh Sharma) is
simultaneously being haunted whenever he tries to smoke.
It’s hilarious to see the Censor Board warning ‘Smoking Kills’
appear on screen when the man is being haunted by his dead
daughter who did not smoke.
Moral science lessons don’t stop: Wear helmets, Don’t answer
phones when you’re driving, Muslim people are living in terror
in India because they may buy goat meat and the mob might
lynch him, you should not steal , do not give in to fake people
who pretend they can become ghostbusters, men who give
moral science lessons are having affairs with young nubile women,
wife beating is bad, especially with a moralistic ghost haunting
the apartment building.
The film has been made shoddily and no one cares if the dead
girl (Patralekha) turns Nanu into a dithering, emotional mess, or
turns his goon into a crazy person. How? Why? You don’t ask
because daddy says the dead girl is in love with Nanu. You shake
your head and watch the love song (obviously no one else can
see her) and see him wooing a ghost with a cappuccino. When
you’ve facepalmed enough you think, the dead girl comes alive
and tells daddy and now boyfriend how there is god, and
‘yam-doots’ who kill her instead of another chap because his wife
was praying really hard at a temple. If you thought the movie is
over, Nanu now turns into a professional ghostbuster or maybe
not… Let’s just dump this film into the vault of ignominy where it
belongs after asking this question, ‘Why Abhay Deol, why?’
(this review appears on nowrunning.com)
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