Zombie: fictional undead creatures regularly encountered in horror and fantasy themed works. They are typically depicted as mindless, reanimated corpses with a hunger for human flesh.
Comedy: is a genre of film that is designed to elicit laughter from the audience; often through humorously exaggerated situations, ways of speaking, or action & characters.
Based on the above definition, Go Goa Gone is indeed a Zom-Com spectacle that is not to be missed. It’s a one-of-a-kind mad hatter movie, that can only be made by someone as mad as Saif, one of the few actors, possibly that still doesn’t take himself too seriously.
And that’s the beauty of this film. It doesn’t take itself or the audience too seriously. It makes no pretensions about what the movie is. They’ve promised a Zom-Com and a Zom-Com it is. Nothing more, nothing less. Period.
So, anyone who gets grossed out by blood, please stay away. Anyone who is looking for meaning in the storyline & the plot, please stay away. Anyone, who lives in denial about youngsters smoking pot, getting laid & drinking themselves silly, please please definitely stay away (you could get really scared with that shit)
But, if you have a funny bone in your body, if you can leave your mind behind for one evening, if you can just let go and jump into the deep without expecting to come out safe at the other end, just for the ride, then this movie is for you.
The movie is the story of 3 single guys (Hardik Luv Bunny - spoken together sound like a twisted Mills & Boons story) living in Mumbai, living the daily drudgery-getting-through-the-routine life that you live in Mumbai (you can tell I’m a Delhiite). Hardik (Kunal Khemu), pot-head loses his job & Luv (Vir Das), the trying-to-reform-pot-head loses his girlfriend & they latch on to their corporate friend-roommate Bunny (Anand Tiwari) for a free trip to Goa for Bunny’s life-altering presentation to senior management. The promise of a life-altering trip comes true in a different form when they attend an all-night rave party in a remote island, where they wake up to realise all except them (and a girl Puja Gupta) have turned into zombies on this island, due to a strange drug served at the party. What ensues is a hilarious escapade trying to dodge and kill zombies with the help of Boris, the zombie-slayer (Saif), till they finally escape the island.
Granted, that it’s no Delhi Belly. But comparing Delhi Belly and Go Goa Gone is as fair as comparing Aamir Khan and Saif Ali Khan. Two totally completely different worlds. The only thing Saif & Aamir have in common is their surname (so to that extent, yes, both movies are new-age youth-based random-events, bizarre plot & dialogue-based comedies) and the fact that both Aamir & Saif turned a new leaf in the iconic Dil Chahta Hai (and therefore, yes, both movies heavily inspired from Hollywood & a western-sensibility of humour & story telling). But otherwise, 2 very different movies. Delhi Belly was about the fast-paced forever evolving plot, the humour in the clever language, and the several tangential & random scenes that eventually become the highlight of the movie (see my review http://www.books-booze-boxoffice.blogspot.in/2011/08/delhi-belly-2011.html). In that sense, Delhi Belly was quite like Aamir - perfect and complete.
Go Goa Gone is anything but - it’s neither perfect, nor complete. Or rather it is perfectly non-sensical and completely insane. It’s a series of funny dialogues happening while the protagonists are trying to stay alive amidst the onslaught of these bizarre creatures, while simultaneously enjoying the satisfaction of ‘killing dead people’ (as Boris calls out). And that’s why it’s great fun.
All the actors deliver fine performances and the discovery of the movie is Kunal Khemu who shows some really good comic timing, that matches Vir Das’s poker-face jokes. We can see Saif having a lot of fun in making and acting in this movie as Boris, who kills dead people, and sheds blood every few seconds, Tarantino style.
While the overall characterisation of the 3 lead protagonists was a little weak, with really no background to who they were, and what they are like, and the story-line doesn’t evolve beyond killing & escaping zombies, there are some priceless moments in the movie, that make it watching the whole movie worthwhile - like the scene when Boris gives them a visual signal of 2 incoming zombies & the guys interpret it as dumb cherades, or when Vir Das comes up with the idea of acting like zombies to escape them & succeeds till he notices his ex in the zombies and gives himself away, or even when they discover the solution to immobilise the zombies is nothing but good old cocaine (because 2 drugs never mix well - the zombie drug and cocaine!).
Again, while some of the scenes & dialogues were a little lame (like when they are trying to understand what these creatures are and they take a while to call out zombies and the lame reference to globalisation bringing them into India, or when Vir Das girlfriend dumps him reminiscent of Delhi Belly), there are priceless ones like when Hardik laughs at Luv’s virginity saying “Yeh kya petrol hai jo tu use bacha raha hai” or when Bunny questions Boris’s Russian credentials and he shouts out “Haan Dilli se Hoon Bhen***”
Fundamentally though, the reason why this movie is enjoyable and therefore should be watched is because, at the heart of it, it’s a movie about the ironic absurdity of life, especially our modern urban lives, when life’s biggest party transforms into life’s last party, where our day-to-day routine zombie-like existence comes face to face with it’s inevitable end at the hands of zombies, and where the very drugs that the young use to escape their reality become their most horrific reality. For this, Albert Camus would be proud of Saif for making this movie.
All that apart though, Go Goa Gone is a brave attempt at building a unique sense of humour (zombie and that too a spoof) in our other-wise too-serious lives, in a country not known for its sense of humour. Walking out of the movie theatre, laughing away, you wonder to yourself... 3 guys, goa, party, drugs, zombies... was this for real? More where that came from Saif. Will be waiting...
Tempted to share my interpretation of the movie:
ReplyDeleteAfter consuming a particular kind of drug, humans are largely brain dead. The only tiny part of the brain that gets activated craves for human blood. Its mindless, emotionless and does not mean anything apart from a sense of instant gratification and the more the merrier. This movie used this ploy as a metaphor for real life where human blood = mindless sex. There are certain kind of chemicals that are used by youngsters in rave parties that leads them to all forms of mindless and emotionless physical activities including assault & abuse.
Also organic drugs were promoted over chemical ones thruout the film. Babaji ki booti helped in making the message musical. :)