3 roomies that have the most clichéd characterization ever – 1 A Doper who cares a fishes eye for anything (Khemu), 2 A hopeless romantic (Vir) and 3 A sincere bread earner ( Anand) – go to Goa, follow a hot girl ( Pooja Gupta) onto an island and get stuck in a Zombie mess brought on by a deadly drug. And yeah, there’s Boreees (Saif) to help them Keel the Living Dead!
Things that work for the film: Khemu is in terrific form. His is by far the best performance in the film. He hams with such finesse that he makes you laugh in anticipation whenever he is on screen. Anand Tiwari rocks too in his support role, while Vir Das does good enough. Pooja Gupta is like the trophy she was meant to be, and just that. The writing is quite good and Raj /DK extract laughs from many set pieces throughout the film. But most of the comedy is elevated by the excellent timing of its prime actors. Saif does well in his cameo and his wacky role almost works! Even the background score is energetic and keeps the pace high.
Things that go wrong: The film might work more for the uninitiated in terms of Zombies. For us, who have seen films like Zombieland/Shaun of the Dead and countless other Zombie films, this seems like a Low Budget Indie Zombie film that depends on gags from other zombie films to work. The production value is surprisingly poor, considering it’s an ILLUMINATI film. A little bit of work in post production might have elevated the mood of the film. Also, we have a long long way to go in terms of showing gore and I have even seen many extremely low budget films from Taiwan that have better makeup and execution of Gory scenes. Even though the film is small, it still gets repetitive after a while and depends on one joke after the other to keep going. If not for Khemu, this ride would seem even more stretched. Also, they go a little overboard in terms of Expletives. Though this is much better than the forced stuff in “Shootout at Wadala”, some stuff like direct references to the male genitalia are completely unnecessary and only put to get some cheap laughs.
So should you watch it? Yes, it’s a fulltoo timepass braindead film to watch with friends. It’s better than watching IPL at home. Seriously... Babaji ki Booti is worth it if you can handle some gore, but yeah, keep your expectations low, coz “No Zombieland this”!
Rating: 5.5/10