Review: 'Phone Bhoot' is Somehow Both Funny and Unfunny

Sometimes a film works purely because it’s literally not serious, at all. Phone Bhoot is that film. It’s not a film that’s going to make it to the halls of Cannes or be shortlisted for an Oscar, but if, on a particularly free day, you join a couple of friends to kill time, Phone Bhoot might be just what you need. 

The film introduces two characters – Ishaan Khattar as Galileo Parthasarathi (Gullu) and Siddhant Chaturvedi as Sherdil Shergil (Major) – who have both dedicated their entire life to horror. They live in a house filled with horror artifacts, perhaps courtesy of an interior designer with similar inclinations as theirs. 

Their lives find some much-needed purpose with Ragini’s (Katrina Kaif) entry. Ragini is a bhatakti aatma (wandering spirit) which is why she never stays in one place for too long (a sufficiently funny running gag). This team, not-so-loosely inspired by the Ghostbusters, don their pest exterminator cosplay and set out to capture paranormal entities. 

What ensues is one joke after another sandwiched between puns and pop culture references. The plot is nothing to write home about and is pretty predictable from the get-go.

The film doesn’t tell you much that the trailer didn’t.

The film, directed by Gurmmeet Singh and produced by Ritesh Sidhwani and Farhan Akhtar, is so hammed up from the very beginning that it seems comical, in the worst way possible.

The film takes its ideas from a hypothetical rulebook that perhaps states that physical comedy comes purely from exaggerated expressions and loud sound.

Not that it can’t work but not everyone is Charlie Chaplin.

That being said, the film is not not entertaining. Sometimes Siddhant and Ishaan seem to forget that they need to push everything up to a 100 and that’s when the film actually works.

Katrina Kaif as Ragini doesn’t have much to work with beyond the punchlines and that comes across in her performance but Phone Bhoot fully explores every aspect of Kaif’s star power, from her endearing screen presence to her fabulous dancing skills to the iconic Slice ads. 

One glaring flaw in the film is something Bollywood has insisted on doing for years – the potential for raunchy comedy begins and ends at a character who objectifies women at the shortest notice and is frankly, creepy. 

The film’s own, original comedy, rarely works except when stars like Jackie Shroff and Sheeba Chaddha are at work.

Many of the gags that actually work, do so because they’re (admittedly well-placed) references from pop culture, due credit to writers Jasvinder Bath and Ravi Shankaran.

Even then, the film leans in so heavily into stereotypes that it seems like a drunken conversation between uncles at a family gathering has come alive (for instance, the only thing Gullu and Major seem to drink is filter coffee and lassi because they’re Tamil and Punjabi respectively).

There’s a Punjabi spirit who can’t help but break into bhangra, there’s another paranormal entity that speaks in a heavily Bengali accented Hindi. While you might laugh along with most of the gags, it’s tough to shake the feeling that this is a film that has a lot of potential but doesn’t seem to trust its own material enough.