GALI GALI CHOR HAI - MAKING

It’s cash-in-on-Anna time again! Set in Bhopal, Gali Gali Chor Hai is a tongue-in-cheek look about the trials of a common man against politicians and corruption in the government machinery. Unfortunately it fails to capitalize on the hot topic, remaining superficial and farfetched for most part.Corruption is a matter well understood by every Indian, pervasive as it is in our lives. You’d think satirizing the issue for film should come naturally to writers and filmmakers. Last year’s Chala Massudi Office Office was another attempt gone awry and GGCH is not really all that better. 

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After an engaging opening song – shot handheld with vast crowds – featuring Kailash Kher, we’re introduced to Bharat (an affable Akshaye Khanna), a gullible cashier at a bank who moonlights as Hanuman in the town’s Ramleela. By refusing a local politician space in his house to set up office, he incurs his wrath and is manipulated to take on Bhopal’s fickle police and judicial system. He spends the first half of the movie forced to recover a table fan he doesn’t own from a nexus of smart-alecky thieves, hungry policemen, and an ineffectual judge. Total cost Rs. 31,000. So far, okay.

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The second half, however, resembles a Chatur Singh Two Star or Golmaal Returns – other films written by director Rumy Jafry. It loses all sense of logic and resorts to slapstick. Bharat attempts to get rid of the fan before it brings him more trouble and now a tullu pump is missing from his house… Riddled with clichés for most part – right from the old bag exchange trick to a convenient communication breakdown in a love triangle – the story doesn’t work because the protagonist is unable to rise to the moment and even the score.This would be okay if it was a serious/realistic film, but this is supposedly comedy. There is no resolution and viewers are left scratching their heads as end credits roll.

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The screenplay is unfocussed and splayed across genres. Why should there be a Veena Malik (dressed in a bikini top lit by LEDs) item number in a film about corruption? Must they be obligatory regardless of the film? Why is there an inordinately extended track about Bharat’s shambolic marriage that only serves to make him look like a nincompoop? And why does his obsession with being Hanuman contribute nothing to the story save for eccentric characterization? There is little connecting these subplots and scenes exist in isolation.

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GGCH seems not only incomplete in thought but also technically. Basic scene to scene transitions are missing, sound is uneven, unintended jump cuts abound, and the print I watched looked washed out and dated as if this was an old film lying in cans that got a hurried released to cash in on the mood of the nation. In a film that poses to give hope to the common man with a laugh or two thrown in, Gali Gali Chor Hai leaves you deeply unsatisfied.

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