Something weird, and it don't look good.

Watching the trailer, you might think that Phone Bhoot (20220 is a jumble of movie references and slacker comedy, and you would be right - that's exactly what Phone Bhoot is.  But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Sherdil Shergil (Siddhant Chaturvedi), known as "Major" to his friends, is an aspiring Lothario from Punjab and his roommate Galileo Parthasarthy (Ishaan Khatter), also known as "Gullu", is a goofy nerd from Tamil Nadu, but they are both idiots.  They're obsessed with horror movies, and have decorated their home with horror paraphernalia, all centered around a life-sized statue of Raaka, the monster from the Ramsay film Purana Mandir, which they scavenged from behind a movie studio.  

The pair are always upcoming up with new ideas for businesses, and those businesses always fail, because the pair insist on cramming ghosts into everything.  Their new big idea is a party planning business, but nobody comes to their debut (horror-themed) party.  And to make matters worse, Raaka's glowing eyes short out, and while Major and Gullu attempt to fix them, they wind up electrocuting themselves.  But only a little!

When they come to, the party is filled with people, none of whom show any interest in paying.  When they catch right of the mysterious but beautiful Ragini (Katrina Kaif) they forget about everyone else, but after the requisite musical number, Ragini is gone, the other partygoers are gone, and the police show up to arrest them for trespassing.

Major and Gullu are released, and Ragini follows them home and explains her deal - she's a ghost, everybody at the party was a ghost, and the boys can now see ghosts after their near death experiences. She also has a business proposition - the boys market themselves as ghostbusters and "exorcise" her from the people and places that she haunts.  They refuse, and then promptly turn around and steal her idea, marketing themselves as "Phone Bhoot,."

And once again, it's a complete failure - they may be able to see ghosts now, but the hotline gets nothing but a string of prank phone calls.  After days of mockery, they finally get a real phone call, and race off to save a real possessed little girl.  And for a while they do pretty well, especially when Gullu realizes that the ghost is speaking Tamil and uses a picture of superstar Rajnikanth as a holy symbol.  But the problem isn't really solved until Ragini appears and talks to the ghost, learning her motivations.  The boys get paid, and the ghost achieves salvation.

And Phone Bhoot takes off, not as a scam, but as a genuine service.  Major and Gullu help the living, and Ragini helps the dead.  It's a big success, and they have great word of mouth among both humans and ghosts.

What they don't know is that they have competition in the salvation business; sorcerer Atmaran Dhyani (Jackie Shroff) offers salvation to ghosts who commit murder and other evil deeds for him.  Of course, Atmaran is running a scam - the ghosts he promises salvation to are taken to the back room and trapped in bottles.  he does not appreciate the idea of two idiots going around granting salvation to troubled souls for free, and he has plans to deal with them.  Fortunately, his hench-ghosts are also idiots.

Phone Bhoot is a dumb movie, and there's no getting around that fact.  However, it's a hard-working dumb movie, with a plot that might not make sense, but at least fits together as a cohesive narrative.  Running jokes from the first half of the movie actually pay off as plot points in the climax.  And I don't know why award-winning actor Jackie Shroff is even in this movie, but he's clearly having a great time.

There's no real deeper meaning or message here, apart from "Pay attention while you're driving!", but I respect the craft.