Clumsy Humour Of Atithi Bhooto Bhava Feels Like Bollywood Is Going Backwards With This Genre

Pratik Gandhi and Jackie Shroff¡¯s Atithi Bhooto Bhava has an interesting cast, but its biggest soft spot is the writing.

I would say the movie would have worked a decade ago, but for these times, it¡¯s too cliched and stereotypical. There are moments where you clearly feel that the film would have worked if it hadn't been made for the commercial audience.

The "mainstreamness" of the film has killed the scope of praising its creativity in places. The ending climax is quite a unique concept, but the overall mediocrity of the whole movie has killed all the chances to explore and praise the uniqueness of the ending.

Zee5 & IMDB

Hardik Gajjar¡¯s direction is patchy, and he has taken way too many shortcuts at places where he could have given an engaging narrative tool to make the concept appear much more interesting and intelligent.

The role of a ghost is played by Jackie Shroff, and just like a ghost in Akshay Kumar¡¯s Singh Is Bling or Amitabh Bachchan¡¯s Bhootnath, the overall idea of the film is to show a story of a good ghost, which has been used plenty of times before.

At times, just to make sense of an illogical sequence of events, Hardik has inserted mindless dialogues to justify those events, but honestly, that justification seems baseless on so many levels.

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Hardik Gajjar and Pratik Gandhi have previously worked together for the film Bhavai, and because of that, the initial scenes of humor are very well-designed and you can feel a sense of comfort in the portrayal done by Pratik Gandhi as he is acquainted with the style of Hardik. A suitable pick for the ghost whose sadness hasn't touched the twinkle in his eyes is Jackie Shroff, the patron saint of good times. However, Shroff's contagious zeal helps dispel uncertainty. You do wonder how Maakhan lost his turban and facial hair during his time journey, and why Maakhan sounds more like a Mumbai layabout than a Punjabi seeker.

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Netra, played by Sharmin Segal, lives up to the expectations set forth in the character profile. But I'm hoping she'll improve in upcoming movies and TV series. Atithi Bhooto Bhava's Sucharita, played by Divinaa Thakur, makes a strong impression. She is the friend who, depending on the time of day, can be both your caregiver and your leg-puller. Once more, I believe she will continue to develop.

The rest of the supporting cast played their role in a good manner but what can be done when their characters aren¡¯t explored to the full potential and every character arc is used just justify a narrative silliness that has spreaded out like a virus on the whole script.

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Atithi Bhooto Bhava has the heart in the right place, but it lacks originality. In fact, there is also a touch of Finding Fanny, where an old man is aimlessly trying to find his lost love. With the right direction , the film might have been a good emotional break, but it falters like anything. Even the other technical aspects of the film are as poor as the script. There are scenes where the cuts and editing seem very jarring, and the cinematography feels odd.

The film could have explored various technicalities and could have introduced new ways of telling a love story of a good ghost but it stayed on to repeating what has been already done and showed no new signs of innovation.

Zee5 & IMDB

The movie makes several attempts to be really amusing, but the way they do it doesn't feel very sincere. It is obvious that logic was the last thing on the filmmakers' minds because the movie fits the stereotype of the "friendly ghost." How clumsy can humor possibly get? Sometimes it seems as though Indian cinema is going backwards in time.

Pratik Gandhi, who was such a charming natural performer in Hansal Mehta's Scam 1992 OTT series about Harshad Mehta, battles with anaemic, dull material in this film, trying to find some laughs in a cadaverously flawed plot. The project immediately has a flat narrative feel to it. Pratik Gandhi deserves better projects, in my opinion. He deserves far more than this dragged-out, lengthy sitcom that is built on a single joke.

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