GREAT GRAND MASTI
Direction: Indra Kumar
Actors: Riteish Deshmukh, Urvashi Rautela, Vivek Oberoi, Aftab Shivdasani
Rating: 0 / 5
Great Grand Masti is about a ghost who needs sex. No, I’m not kidding. Ragini died a virgin. Her aatma won’t get shanti until she enjoys a suhaag raat. Enter our three heroes – Amar, Prem and Meet. If you’ve watched the earlier films in the franchise, you will know that they are all married but they function like dogs in heat - minimal intelligence and raging libidos. They are always, always looking for sex.
They come to the haveli where Ragini (Urvashi Rautela) resides – she wafts around wearing cholis so tight and so tiny that I was worried one would rip off if she took a deep breath. Ragini insists that they sleep with her willingly because, ‘masti ka mazaa zabardasti mein nahin hai’. But sleeping with her means death. And so our boys must save themselves and actually say no.
Words cannot adequately convey how torturous this film is. How can I explain what it’s like to see Aftab Shivdasani pretend to play a piano with his penis? Or Vivek Oberoi imagine that his hulking brother-in-law is coming on to him. Or Riteish Deshmukh offer himself to his shrieking mother-in-law, played by Usha Nadkarni.
At one point, Prem tries to take a crap outdoors. He thinks that a cobra has bitten him on his rear end. He suggests that one of his friends suck out the poison. Amar says it’s such a relief that the cobra didn’t bite the front.
The three go to a village called Doodhwadi. They imagine that it will be filled with nubile women in skimpy clothes. It turns out to be mostly old women. The men stare and then say – “Gaon main aao, baasi pao, what to do now?” These words were written by Akash Kaushik and Madhur Sharma.
The acting is as awful as the writing. I think director Indra Kumar’s only instruction was - make faces. Aftab, Riteish and Vivek contort theirs all the time and gesticulate widely. And then there’s the leading lady. In an interview, Rautela described Great Grand Masti as a ‘family film’. She said it was a ‘horror comedy on the naughtier side’. That one line is more memorable than her work here.
In January, I had reviewed another sex comedy, Mastizaade, directed by Milap Zaveri. I said that it was unlikely that Bollywood would make a worse film this year. I think I was wrong. It’s a close competition, but Great Grand Masti just might be worse. Like Mastizaade, it is willfully regressive and infantile, but Indra Kumar also throws in Karva Chauth. After two hours of in-your-face breasts and Viagra jokes, we are told that Indian women can save their husbands by doing Karva Chauth. It made me so mad that I almost missed Milap.
Since my rating for Mastizaade was zero, this will have to be less than zero. You have been warned.
