Masand's Verdict: Bheja Fry

Everyone loves a good laugh, and I'm no different. Director Sagar Bellary's Bheja Fry which opens at cinemas this week is a cleverly-written and competently-enacted comedy which stars Rajat Kapoor as a selfish and insensitive man whose idea of Friday night entertainment involves a party where unsuspecting, dim-witted victims provide laughs to his group of like-minded, shallow friends.

One such victim, Vinay Pathak, an income tax officer with an annoying singing habit, visits Rajat at his home one Friday, excited to be invited for a dinner party. But the joke turns out to be on Rajat eventually, when he watches his life fall apart just moments after this bumbling fool walks through the door.

His wife decides to leave him, his nympho mistress decides to show up, his back is killing him from an earlier injury, the fear of an income-tax raid is looming over his head, he's forced to confront a friend he'd wronged some years ago, and this idiot at his home is the man responsible for most of these catastrophes.

While it's true this film is somewhat entertaining and much of the humour is derived from its rock-solid script, let me be the party-pooper here by revealing that Bheja Fry is a scene-by-scene, dialogue-by-dialogue remake of the superhit French farce The Dinner Game, which, if you remember clearly I'd recommended on this show some months ago.

Bheja Fry is a scene-by-scene, dialogue-by-dialogue remake of the superhit French farce The Dinner Game

You see, Bheja Fry isn't 'inspired' or 'borrowed' or 'influenced' from the original film, it's an out-and-out remake. One can only hope that remake rights were bought from the makers of the French film, although I didn't see any acknowledgement of the same in the film's credits, and in fact I saw this film's screenplay credited to two persons, which if you ask me is shocking, considering the only real work on the script would be in the form of translation.

Now that I've cleared my conscience and made the point about plagiarism, let me confess Bheja Fry does have more than just a handful of hilarious moments, most of which are provided by the imaginative screenplay and dialogue.

The film's director Sagar Bellary rarely digresses from the plot and the narrative of the original French film, although he does make a few significant changes. Like the fact that Rajat's wife role is a little more fleshed out in Bheja Fry than it was in the original film Bellary gives Sarika a career and a back-story, but then he botches it all up by failing to show clearly the building resentment Sarika feels towards her husband, and the reason for this.