Bhooty Call - Go Goa Gone

 Go Goa Gone (2013) has a refrain of sorts; at various points in the film, our hapless slacker heroes stop and ask themselves "What do we know?  And what have we learned?"  Here's what I know: Go Goa Gone is a zombie movie with the soul of a stoner comedy, or possibly a stoner comedy with zombie trappings, or maybe it's a butterfly dreaming it's a man.  It is not a movie that feels obligated to respect genre boundaries, in any case.

Roommates Luv (Vir Das) and Hardik (Kunal Khemu) are having a bad week.  Luv has cleaned up his act, resolving to give up booze and drugs, focus on his job, and finally propose to his girlfriend Priyanka (Meenal Thakur), only to discover that she's been cheating on him the whole time.  Hardik, meanwhile, has embraced his hard partying lifestyle, only to be fired when the boss catches him smoking and (attempted) canoodling in the office.  They both need a break, and when they learn that responsible roommate Bunny (Anand Tiwari) is going to Goa on business, they invite themselves along.

In Goa, Luv meets Luna (Puja Gupta) and is immediately smitten.  And while Luna is not especially smitten in return, she does invite the boys to join her at a secret party being held on a nearby secluded island.  The party is hosted by Russian mobster Boris (Saif Ali Khan), who is using the party to launch  a new, experimental drug.  Most of the party-goers take the new drug, but Luv, Hardik, Bunny and Luna don't have the chance.  Which is just as well, because by morning all the people who took the drug have turned into zombies.

Our heroes are not really prepared for zombie fighting, though they do manage some small but hapless heroics before they are rescued by Boris, who cheerfully explains that "I keel dead people."  And if you've seen a zombie movie before, you've got as fair idea of what happens next.  They squabble.  They run from zombies.  Boris shoots a lot of zombies.  Luv nearly gets himself killed with a stupid plan he lifted from Shaun of the Dead.  Still, they have a goal: the gang reached the island by boat, so if they can reach the boat, everything will be fine.  Right?

Now, what have I learned?  Zombie movies have a reputation for nihilism.  The end of the world brings out the worst in people, strangers can't be trusted, you have to do whatever it takes to survive, and even then, some idiot is going to be zombiebit and not bother to tell anyone.  On the other hand, Go Goa Gone has all the gore and violence you'd expect from a zombie movie, but it somehow ends up much more optimistic than usual; yes, the hapless protagonists spend a lot of time bickering, but they still pull together, take risks to protect each other, and actually manage to grow and become better people in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.  It's not the sort of emotional arc you expect to see in this kind of film, but I will take it.