Bhooty Call: Golmaal Again

Golmaal Again (2017) is not a straight horror movie.  It's not even a horror comedy, really.  This is an installment in the long-running Golmaal comedy franchise, and while there are ghosts in it, the movie is about as scary as the average episode of The Ghost Whisperer.  

The Golmaal movies don't have any real continuity from one film to the next; actors recur, and they may have the same character names or perform the same running gags as in previous films, but every movie is a world in itself, with its own overly complicated plot there to serve as an excuse for farcical shenanigans. In this case, Gopal (Ajay Devgn), Laxman (Shreyas Talpade), Madhav (Arshad Warsi), Lucky (Tusshar Kapoor), and the other Laxman (Kunal Khemu) grew up in the same orphanage, overseen by Jamnadas (Uday Tikekar).  The five orphans discovered a baby girl whom they named Khushi, but after a few happy years childhood rivalries caused the boys to leave the orphanage in two groups.  Gopal and the first Laxman grew up to be enforcers for Babli (Sanjay Mishra) while Madhav, Lucky, and the other Laxman went to work for Vasooli (Mukesh Tiwari.)

Naturally everybody has their own comic quirk.  Gopal is an amazing fighter, but is terrified of ghosts.  Laxman 1 is a loyal friend with a lisp that's supposed to be funny.  Madhav - well, Madhav doesn't really have a quirk per se, he's just a jerk who likes to play practical jokes.  Lucky speaks in complete gibberish, which again is supposed to be funny, and Laxman 2 is maybe three inches shorter than the others..

When Jamnadas suddenly dies, all all five of the gang agree to put aside their differences and return to the orphanage for the funeral.  There, they are reunited with the orphanage's librarian, Anna (Tabu), who happens to be able to see ghosts.  This will be important later.  They also meet real estate tycoon Vasu Reddy (Prakash Raj), who announces that he will be demolishing the orphanage and rebuilding it in Bangalore.

After returning home, Gopal is haunted by an actual ghost; he and Laxman 1 flee to Anna for help, and she suggests that they stay with her in the house of the blind Colonel Chauhan (Sachin Khedekar); her ghost knowledge is a strong motivation, but Gopal is also intrigued by what he thinks is the Colonel's pretty young maid (Parineeti Chopra).  Meanwhile, Madhav and his crew are hired by Vasu Reddy to chase Gopal away.

And then wackiness ensues for a while.  Fake ghost shenanigans.  Real ghost shenanigans.  Johnny Lever appears as a fellow grownup orphanage alumnus who occasionally transforms into Johnny Lever doing a bit.  It's like if Hamlet spent the first three acts of the play playing pranks on Laertes before finally finding out what happened to his father.  But eventually the real plot arrives.

The maid isn't the maid, she's the Colonel's adopted daughter.  The ghost of the Colonel's adopted daughter, actually, and these five knuckleheads can see her because she's actually the ghost of the Colonel's adopted daughter Khushi, and they took care of her when she was a baby.  (To the film's credit, at this point the various characters all point out how completely inappropriate a relationship between Gopal and Khushi would be, and the romance angle is dropped entirely.)  Khushi and Jamnadas were both murdered by Nikhil (Neil Nitin Mukesh), who was her fiance and Jamnadas's wayward nephew, all as a part of a scheme with Vasu Reddy to gain ownership of the orphanage so that they can tear it down and build an amusement park.  Anna has deliberately brought the gang together so that they can avenge Khushi and save the orphanage.

Usually, a premise like this would lead to a basketball playing dog saving the day, but this time they decide to try a reverse Scooby Doo; Nikhil is busy being evil in Dubai, so the gang decide to sue their skills, a fake Babu, and their actual supernatural ghost who has amazing powers of telekinesis and can possess anybody in order to fake a haunting and scare Vasu Reddy into confessing his crime to actual medium Anna, pretending to be a fake medium, so that they can record the confession and give it to the police.  

(The plan seems a little overcomplicated, since they have a ghost with actual supernatural powers who has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to possess people, including Vasu Reddy specifically, and make them say whatever she wants.  It seems to me that they can just have the eagles fly them to Mordorskip a few steps.  Perhaps it's better for Khushi's spiritual development if they do things the hard way.)

This is a very silly movie, and it's also largely inoffensive in its silliness.  It's certainly less obsessed with sex than most of the other big budget multi-star comedy franchises.  The complicated plot serves as a delivery vehicle for jokes, and the jokes are largely . . . okay.  (Apart from having two characters with speech impediments played for laughs.  That was not okay.)

Ultimately, the movie comes down to its performances.  Ajay Devgn is clearly having fun playing a  a parody of his usual tough guy image, combining Singham style violence with comedic vulnerability.  Johnny Lever is clearly at home here, recycling several of his most practiced comic tics.  Parineeti Chopra isn't given much to do apart from stand around and look beautiful and/or ominous.

And Tabu is largely wasted; she's an actor of tremendous depth and talent (this film was made three years after her ferocious and heartbreaking performance as Ghazala in Haider, and a full fourteen years after her chilling "Lady MacBeth" in Maqbool) and here she just narrates, speaks kindly to ghosts, and acts as stern but supportive den mother to our rowdy heroes.  Her performance is fine, she just doesn't have much to work with.