Review : Horror-Comedy ‘Roohi’ packs a dose of entertainment
Stars : ***
In recent times there’s a spurt in movie sequels. When a movie is successful at box office, there’s a trend to come up with it’s sequel thus cashing in on the success of the original. But many of these sequels have not met the same fate as of the original, most of them bombing at the box office. A couple of years ago Rajkumar Rao and Shraddha Kapoor starrer ‘Stree’ was released and this horror comedy was an instant hit with the audiences which entered 100 crore club too. A sequel to it is ‘Roohi’ (which was formerly titled Roohi Afza) which has Rajkumar Rao, Varun Sharma and Janhvi Kapoor in the lead. Frankly speaking Bollywood has not indulged in horror-comedy genre frequently. But Stree’s success has paved the way for the film makers to indulge in horror comedy genre. Director Hardik Mehta (Kaamyaab) has tried to his best to entertain audience with a horror-comedy movie ‘Roohi’.
In a small town, Bagadpur, lives two young friends, Bhawra Pandey (Rajkumar Rao) and Kattani Qureshi (Varun Sharma) who work as reporters for Zalzala newspaper and also help Gujiya Shakil (Manav Vij) who is a contractor of ‘Pakadiya Shadi’. In Pakadiya shadi a girl is kidnapped to marry off to whoever gives a ‘Supari’ (contract). In one of the instances Roohi (Janhvi Kapoor) is kidnapped in daylight by Bhawra and Kattani and since the marriage gets postponed and later cancelled they are stuck with her. In the meanwhile it is revealed that Roohi has a split personality and a spirit enter her body named Afza. Bhawra has already started liking Roohi and strangely Kattani enjoys Afza’s company. It becomes a love triangle of a different kind, where two guys are in love with a girl with two personalities. But who gets whom and how is the crux of the story which tries to send chills as well as make the audience laugh.
The story disappoints and it does not rise to the standard of Stree. Even screenplay seems scattered and it required a trim to make it more gripping. But the direction is good and the director remains true to the genre and tries to entertain with one liners. He seems to be a movie buff and uses references from the iconic films like DDLJ, Titanic etc for good laughs in the situational comedy scenes. One thing for sure is that film scores with it’s punchy one-liners. Rajkumar Rao presents an extension of his Stree character and has used western UP dialect and mannerism to show his versatility. But at times his speech or dialogues are not properly audible. Janhvi kapoor is good as both timid Roohi and chilling Afza. CG has helped her portray Afza character but sadly she doesn’t have much screen time as well as dialogues. Varun Shama scores big with his comic timing and his passing one liners too are funny. Songs Panghat and Nadiyon Paar are good and background music tries to help hard to the mood of the movie. 134 minutes are too long for a movie like this and proper editing would have benefited in creating expected impact.
Janhvi Kapoor and Rajkumar Rao’ fans will certainly enjoy theatre experience of horror-comedy ‘Roohi’!