Bhoothnath Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Aman Siddiqui, Juhi Chawla and others Director: Vivek Sharma Rating: **
The right casting is usually considered to be half the battle won, but signing up stars like Amitabh Bachchan, a fairly cute kid (Aman Siddiqui) plus Shah Rukh Khan and Juhi Chawla and wasting their collective talent and draw is a crime.
Vivek Sharma in his debut film Bhoothnath tries to be scary, funny and sentimental, but the film turns out to be none of the above-just a tedious tale of a ghost and a kid bonding.
After a fairly scary prologue, in which a romantic couple have their evening wrecked by ruined by a ghost, the film goes into the main plot about a small family renting a haunted Goa mansion, Nath Villa. Aditya (Shah Rukh Khan), his wife Anjali, and kid Banku (Aman Siddiqui) ignore the ghost warnings and move in.
SRK has a guest appearance, so he goes off on his ship, the wife cannot get domestic help because the house is haunted, but the ghost of Kailash Nath (Bachchan) only comes before the kid, who refuses to be frightened by the unwashed apparition.
They become friends, do some singing and dancing (why the skimpily dressed girls?), some really hackneyed special effects are trotted out (furniture flying, a hand extending endlessly). Kids, who are not even that impressed, considering they have seen better effects on TV and far superior work in films, probably roll over and sleep when Bhoothath takes an abrupt turn into maudlin Baghban territory; old Kailash Nath and sad wife (Neena Kulkarni) being abandoned by the son (Priyanshu Chatterjee) who leaves for America and doesn’t even call.
Tears, recriminations and land-grabbing attempts later, the film ends with a ‘to be continued’ warning. The fate of this film might just put a halt to that plan... but you can’t tell.
Filmmakers are known to be foolhardy, and Bachchan is probably easily talked into some of the worst films in recent times, Aag being a prime example.
Juhi Chawla is too bright to be playing a mom making endless sandwiches, and Shah Rukh Khan, well, this must be an aberration for him, even though it’s a brief role. Thumbs down to Vishal-Shekhar’s music too.
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