Movie Review - Guest Iin London by Suhel Johar

 

Loose Script, Loud Acting, Weak Direction, Below Average Music - Play Host To A Host Of Horrifying Guests in Guest Iin London.

Each week we watch movies and review them. Fascinating as it sounds, the job is a dull one. If you’re an avid Bollywood watcher, you will certainly know that of the 350+ movies that hit the screens each year there are hardly a handful of films that make you sit up and watch and even fewer that entertain you. Guest Iin London falls in neither category. If you liked Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge? you better miss its degraded version which has released in the form of Guest Iin London. It is nothing but a disaster of a film that successfully disappoints you in every way it can. Is it a sequel to its first part? No, not at all, but it can definitely be called as reboot of the former.

The film revolves around Aryan Grover (Kartik Aaryan) and his British Indian girlfriend Anaya (Kriti Kharbanda) who are planning to fake a marriage so that he can get a citizenship in the UK. 10 days before the wedding, Aryan’s distant uncle’s (who stays in India) neighbour’s tenant Gagga chacha (Paresh Rawal) and Guddi chachi (Tanvi Azmi) suddenly land in Aryan’s office. A reluctant Aryan has to take them home. However, although Aryan and Anaya are not the ones who believe in the primer on the concept of Atithi Devo Bhava (Guest is God), they need this elderly couple as witnesses of their (fake) marriage as their only relative in London. So, they decide tolerate this interfering, quirky, irritating but loving and caring chacha-chachi until they completely lose their patience.

The narrative of Guest Iin London is pretty much the same. The main plot and the sub plots have no connection whatsoever and the film is stretched beyond endurance at several places. You don’t know how the couple fell in love at first place, one moment they are shown arguing and ready to kill each other and in the very next scene, the heroine is shown flirting with the hero, and the loop goes on. Throughout the sojourn, the couple never once probe their Guests true origins. And all this in a terrorist-prone metro like London. The guest indeed brings home a terror campaign of a different kind, toxic farts and ear-splitting gargles being his principal weapons. There’s nothing in the film that attracts you or catches your attention in the film. Ironically, the film is supposed to be a comedy but you hardly laugh don’t think that anything is so attractive though the film involves comedy and punches that you may like. The hindustani punch doesn’t work in fact they get annoying at a point. In the desperate attempt to cause a laugh riot, the director stuffs in a plateful of no-brainer situations. The jokes that have been fabricated on Pakistan and China are superficial.  It seems that blind nationalism has been designed to please the support of nationalism.  They could have avoided jokes with racism remarks. All of them cause indigestion. If you survive the nausea, a stale climax is waiting to gag you at the end. Just before climax, the film goes from London to America. Some more cinematic freedom has been taken on that front. 

There are too many loopholes in the film to begin with; the very first scene where our desi chacha sleeps on the floor in a plane is an exaggeration. The crazy fart gag does nothing but disgust you, the dialogues are ridiculously written, especially the part where a veteran actor like Paresh Rawal is compared with a pet. Amidst all this, comes a scene where a funeral is celebrated in a remade Baby Doll song version. Seriously, what were the makers even thinking about while writing a scene like that? For a runtime of 138 minutes, the film is nothing but a pile of lame jokes that heavily tests your patience.

Direction by Ashwini Dhir is spineless. His collaboration with Robin Bhatt and Akshat Gupta on the story and script of the film lacks purpose and imagination. Dialogues by Manoj Rajan Tripathi are banal. Sudhir Chaudhary's cinematography and Manan Sagar's editing is routine. Music by Raghav Sachar is below average and none of the songs stay with you even when it's been played on the screen just a few minutes ago. Background score by Amar Mohile is passable.

Performance wise, Paresh Rawal fails to tickle your funny bones with his brand of comedy in this one. It is one of those films that Paresh will want to forget and not see it even in his nightmares. Kartik Aaryan has a limited set of expressions and puts in a below average act. Kriti Kharbanda looks pretty is all one can say about her because she can’t act. Tanvi Azmi is credible in her role. But one actor who steals the show is Sanjay Mishra he is the only actor who makes you laugh. Last but not the least, Ajay Devgn's cameo accompanied with some poor CGI will make you chuckle for all the wrong reasons. His cameo is one of the worst cameos in a Bollywood film.

On the whole, Guest Iin London is a miserable attempt to make you laugh and ends up making you want to tear your hair in despair.