07 June,2024 06:48 AM IST | Mumbai | Priyanka Sharma
Munjya
The joy of watching a horror film lies in the anticipation of the unseen, unknown or unnatural. Once the ghost is out of the shadows, what's there to fear about? And once the fear is gone, what's there to be excited about? The laughs? At least that's what the makers of Munjya, Bollywood's latest horror comedy, want one to believe. Director Aditya Sarpotdar and his team, however, are unable to match their intention with execution.
Munjya, starring Abhay Verma, Sharvari and Mona Singh, is an unworthy addition to producer Dinesh Vijan's popular horror comedy universe that already boasts of Rajkummar Rao-Shraddha Kapoor's Stree (2018), Rao-Janhvi Kapoor-starrer Roohi (2021), Varun Dhawan-starrer Bhediya (2022).
Rooted in a popular Maharashtrian folklore, Munjya is described as the ghost of a boy, who dies just after his Brahminical thread ceremony. A Munjya is said to be a ghost restless to get married. In the film, Munjya is the ghost of Bittu's (Verma) granduncle, who was in love with Munni, a woman much older than him. As Bittu comes to face Munjya, he has to fulfil the latter's wish to get married to Munni, if he wants any respite. The story by Yogesh Chandekar itself bore promise.
There was a scope for horror as well as absurdity-driven comedy on paper. But Niren Bhatt's screenplay fails to exploit its potential. The film that has an intriguing beginning, spirals down after the first 20 minutes. This is a film where even before the interval, one sees the ghost way too many times, appearing after every few seconds and interacting with humans. The discovery, therefore, is over before one knows it. So, for such a story, what becomes crucial is its humour. A ghost pining for love, instructing human beings to find him his bride surely sounds amusing. Only that it is not. The humour rarely lands and mostly feels juvenile, making one laugh at the film rather than with it.
This is also a film that features characters more lifeless than dead. Bittu is a timid introvert, who would rather suffer than speak up. While Verma is in solid form, the character hardly offers him any variation to have fun with. Singh as Bittu's mother is one note, again not her doing but of the script that solely relies on the stereotype of a feisty Punjabi woman. Sharvari, the film's female lead, is barely there for half an hour, making do with a few crumbs in the climax. While the origin story of Munjya is compelling, the scenes with the supernatural character soon fall into a pattern of ineffective jump scares and unfunny gags.
It doesn't say much about Munjya when the post credit scene, teasing a crossover in the universe, gets the audience more excited than the entire film they just watched. Update the laughs and scare better, next time.
