A ZOMBIE CARNIvAL

G O G Oa G One

STarring: Kunal Khemu, Vir Das, Anand Tiwari, Puja Gupta and Saif Ali Khan

Direc TorS: Krishna DK-Raj Nidimoru

Not taking into account the expressionless “actors” who have infested Hindi films from time immemorial, zombies are a relatively new phenomenon in Hindi cinema.

Go Goa Gone is a savagely funny take on the mythic cult of zombies. Since we are new to the genre, there are sly footnotes about them. Characters in the course of their casual (and corny) conversations tell us plenty about Zombie folklore: that zombies enjoy eating human flesh, that they cannot run fast and most of all, zombies are actually dead people.

Working backwards on the premise of heroes shooting the dead, the director duo have fashioned a fiercely funny fable filled with loads of innocuous innuendos and rambunctious scare attacks that never quite reach the stage of stomachchurning gore-fests.

Go Goa Gone can be seen as a brutal burlesque of the horror genre. Scenes of ghouls/zombies chasing our puny heroes through the Goan foliage are more satirical than scary. This innovative ode to terror moves at a quirky yet measured pace, gamboling quickly from one well-written scene of mock-terror to another without losing track of the film’s ultimate ‘bromantic’ purpose.

For starters, the three heroes - Kunal Khemu, Vir Das and the quietly effective Anand Tiwari - who travel to Goa for fun and frolic, look like cocky offshoots of the trio from Farhan Akhtar’s Dil Chahta Hai

Interestingly, one of Farhan’s protagonists Saif Ali Khan transforms into a blonde Russian zombie slayer named Boris whose accent keeps slipping off. And that’s fine because Boris is not really Russian. Ha ha. And this is not a scary movie. Not really. The principal actors are fully in-sync with the zany mood.

The laughs flow with energetic gusto melting into a tide of spooky gore without creating a genre-confounding mess. Kunal and Sita Menon’s Hindi dialogues catch the fervour of the tongue-in-cheek words cheekily.

Here is one film that doesn’t lose its way in translation. Though the characters ‘think’ in English (Hardik, indeed!) and although the whole concept of a zombie flick is B-grade off- comparatively tame and lacks the sparkle evident in the rest of the writing.

Nonetheless there is so much to celebrate in this film, most of all the performances. 14-year-old Riya Vij makes an unlikely yet thoroughly convincing heroine in a tale that requires her character to try everything, from a brassiere to heartbreak, for the first time.

To her credit, the girl sails through all the tests put before her character. She is a prize find.

As for the ever-dependable Divya Dutta, when has she ever let down a film? As Gippi’s mother, she puts spunk and spirit into her well-written character.

Casting in fact is the backbone of this film. Not just Riya in the main role, even her friends in school are played by girls and guys who don’t seem to fake it. They wouldn’t know how to!

The film also pays homage to the songs of Shammi Kapoor in a rather gauche onrush of feelings. But then awkwardness is the predominant mood in this work. You can’t escape clumsiness when you are groping around at the beginning of life’s unique journey.

So a big yippee for Gippi. It’s a comingof-age saga told with a disarming lack of artifice. The film’s joie de vivre envelopes you in a sunny embrace.

Su BHASH K J HA

mainstream Hollywood, the hair-raising hi-jinks manage to stay relatively sleazefree.

Peppery and with a pinch of ‘assault’, the performances are pitched at just the right flavour of fright. All the main actors have fun with their parts. But it is Kunal who seems the most at ease playing a synthesis of the slimy and the slippery without falling out of character.

A gem of an actor, why is Khemu not given more interesting work to do?

Saif’s star turn as the “Russian” sharpshooter is understandably selfmocking in tone. Saif’s character is in keeping with the film. You really can’t take the terror template seriously. And yet you get the uneasy feeling that the joke is on us.

A zombie fiesta that’s savagely funny and surreptitiously scary, who but the codirectors of the genre-defying Shor In The City could convert the kookie content into an experience of a ‘laugh’-time!

Oh yes, there’s the mandatory glamquotient in the figure of Puja Gupta. In her presence Hardik, giggles, gets really excited.

Go for Go Goa Gone. It’s a stressbuster with balls, nerves and chutzpah.

Oh yes, Goa as shot by Lukas Pruchnik and Dan MacArthur never looked more inviting. And less hospitable.

Su BHASH K J HA