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Govinda Naam Mera

Farhad Dalal
By-
Farhad Dalal
Rating
1 Star popcorn reviewss

Introduction

Thank God It Is Friday and the regular batch of new releases begin today. With that I finished watching the new Hindi film Govinda Naam Mera which is now streaming on Hotstar. And I will be mincing no words in saying that I have been left numb in not such a good way. I always do have my red flags up for Hindi films going the direct digital route. Yes, we as viewers very casually throw in the phase that XYZ movie should have had a direct OTT release as opposed to opting for a theatrical one. But the reality may be far different unless those are original films made for the OTT platforms.

When the trailer of Govinda Naam Mera was out, things were quite over the top in the name of comedy. Now I often do not take the trailers quite seriously(most of the time I skip watching them too), but incidently things were so loud and outrageous that my red flags were fluttering for the film right from the start. But the film did boast of a killer ensemble and this promise for a joyride. Earlier I had similar bits of skepticism from Phone Bhoot but the film turned out to be a lot of fun. So I did have a bit of hope venturing into the film but boy was I not prepared for things to come. So then is Govinda Naam Mera worth your time? Ofcourse NOT but do stick around for this roast review!

Story & Screenplay

Govinda Naam Mera follows the story of a protagonist who is fighting a legal battle against his step-brother with his wife and girlfriend for company until he gets embroiled in a murder. The story is touted as a black crime comedy but the pitch of the dialogues are so shrilling-ly high that I did end up with a splitting headache. The screenplay of more than 2 hours meant that the torture was also stretched beyond limits.

Within the first 20 minutes of the drama I did get a gist of how bad and ridiculous the film actually is. So in case you are interested, you are introduced to the loud mouthed protagonist and a series of buffoons around him in the most preposterous manner. The proceedings are loud and unfunny and that is when I knew that everyone cannot be an Akshay Kumar(who has a terrific knack of extracting humour even with an outrageous setup) with this brand of comedy. Here it seemed as if the writers were trying to punch your stomach into making you laugh your guts out. End result : I ran out of guts(pun intended).

It is not easy to construct a black comedy simply because you need to be sharp with your writing and frequently create moments of madness during the course of the drama. But it does not help when you are pretending to be funny whereas in reality even a friend of mine with a very bad sense of humour did seem hilarious as compared to this rather silly drama. I wonder who approved this dogsh*t from Dharma. Were the writers not aware of what a ridiculously bad script this is? It is one thing to be silly but be very self aware about it. But here, the silliness quotient was way below room temperature yet it gave me an impression that the makers thought that this was a rather intelligent drama.

About halfway through the film, the drama wishes to shift tones with the introduction of a conflict that is a murder in this case. And I thought right, things will get better. But the mess continued to worsen to an extent where the drama did become unbearable. The writers may have been caught in a dilemma of whether they wanted the film to be a thriller or a comedy, the end result being not a thriller and definitely not a comedy. It was a hot mess that reminded me of very bad films like Heropanti 2 and Liger. There was absolutely no structure to the drama whatsoever. So even the twists and turns do fall flat. The drama does try to end on a high by trying to be clever than it actually is. But I did see that twist coming way before and the only thing that I wished to end was my misery. In other words, the screenplay is not bad, it is ridiculously bad!

Dialogues, Music & Direction

The dialogues are loud, unfunny and absolutely cringe worthy. Some of the lines made me wish that I put a bullet through my head and end my misery of watching this film. The music is below average although some of the song placement did extract some humour here and there. The BGM is pretty generic and doesn’t merit a mention or a discussion. The cinematography towards the end was good, capturing scenic locations of Thailand really well. The editing could have been a bit more sharp. Director Shashank Khaitaan has done a ridiculously bad job here. This film may well have been saved by Dharma who did opt for a direct OTT release, else no one could have saved this really bad film from a new Box Office record. There was zero control of the proceedings in his direction thus resulting in a hot mess which is right up there with the worst films of the year.

Performances

The performances are ridiculously over the top here. It seemed that the performers were on steroids which prompted them to ham in every scene. It takes some amount of talent from the makers to make great actors like Renuka Shahane and Sayaji Shinde overact. Both of them have forgettable outings here. Dayanand Shetty as Javed is pretty good here. Trupti Khamkar as Manju is strained in her effort to extract humour. Amey Wagh is a good actor but does go overboard here as Kaustubh. Akshay Gunawat and Viraj Ghelani are just about average. Kiara Advani as Suku looks pretty but hams through her teeth here. Bhumi Pednekar as Gowri has very limited scope and she misses the mark here. The biggest irony is in the form of Vicky Kaushal who had delivered his career’s best performance as Sardar Udham only to follow up with the weakest performance of his career here as Govinda. He is over the top, loud and unfunny and I wonder what was the brief given to him for such a poor outing. I would like to believe that this is an aberration and that Vicky is way more talented than what we have witnessed here.

Conclusion

Govinda Naam Mera is a film that joins the elite club of Heropanti 2 and Liger for the worst film of the year. On a side note, a film having Govinda in its title has released on the same day as Avatar : The Way Of Water. What are we to expect then? Save yourself from getting piles in your brain and skip Govinda Naam Mera in a heartbeat. Available on Hotstar.

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