Director: Satish Kaushik
Starring: Anil Kapoor, Shilpa Shetty, Keerthy Reddy

Story

This is a laughable attempt comedy, Bollywood style. An outrageously loud comedy where people scream when they can do with a whisper, where people take leave of reason when they have nothing to be unreasonable about. If this is cinema mainstream, it is probably time to strengthen the rivulets may be patronize films like Mitr which managed to evoke more than a couple of smiles without an in-your-face approach.

Satish Kaushik, a fine comedian himself, probably did not want to pass on his skills to Anil Kapoor, Shilpa Shetty and others in this tale of a man out to bring warring families together. He has given bearable entertainers like Hamara Dil Aapke Paas Hai and Hum Aapke Dil Mein Rehte Hain in the past. This time, there is nothing in Badhaai Ho Badhaai for Kaushik to pat himself on his sizeable back. Or except a note of congratulations from the audience.

Weak screenplay, forgettable music, inane lyrics, insipid dialogue and consistently mediocre acting performances, the film has it all.

It opens as a story of two families - one Hindu, other Christian - who are at each other's throats because the Christian guy and the Hindu girl eloped to the dismay of their brothers. And parents. Twenty-seven years after the moony-eyed couple has walked into the sunset of life, appears Raja - Anil Kapoor. Soon of the couple that had upped and eloped he wants to bring his maternal grandfather and grandmother and paternal grandfather and grandmother close.

Along the way, as is the wont of our Bollywood directors, Raja ends up with Bantu-Beauty- Shilpa Shetty - a Punjabi lass who claims to be his wife. All is well only until Raja decides to exercise his right over her as the alleged spouse.

The girl wriggles out with a dark secret - Raja is not the son of the family's estranged couple. And Raja had come all the way because he wants that his girlfriend - played by Keerti Reddy - marry her love with the warring families' blessings.

Along the way, the director gets a chance to reel out Raja's love story. He was an intelligent man but quite a bit overnight.

But he knew better than to propose to a girl who could just as well have called him 'uncle'. Love changed him.

It gave him a reason to hope, an occasion to smile. But by the time he won the battle of the bulge, it was too late and the girl had found a suitalble match for herself.

Also by the time, the families come around; the viewers too would have had too much. Neither Anil Kapoor's girth nor Shilpa Shetty's feeble attempts at comedy inject humour into this listless tale.

While Anil in films like Virasat an Eeshwar is a class apart, he is certainly no Govinda when it comes to comic timing. And Shilpa is not even a girl down Sridevi's evoking laughter.

Also a horde of seasoned character artistes are reduced to mere bit players here with past masters like Amrish Puri, Govind Namdeo, Anang Desai, Farida Jalal and Rohini Hattangady hardly getting a word in edgeways.

Sorry, Satish Kaushik, we have seen all this in the past. We may still get to see it again. The chances are it will be better. And dear readers go ahead, recommend this film to those who played a bad joke on you for this film is nothing but a bad joke.