Star cast: Arshad Warsi, Dia Mirza, Boman Irani, Sandhya Mridul and Zehra Naqvi
Director: Kabeer Kaushik
Hum Tum Aur Ghost is a perfect example of how good ideas don’t get transform into good films. Though, stories of ghosts have been a part of both Hollywood and Bollywood movies for decades, with films such as this one it seems the Hindi Film industry still cannot leave its fascination for ghost stories.
Though Arshad Warsi, who is said to have given this idea, has denied that the story of Hum Tum Aur Ghost, has been inspired by any Hollywood project, there are a lot of similarities between this film and some of the Hollywood Movies.
The weakest point of the film is its screenplay, which suffers from really bad writing. The basic drawback of the film is that rather than coming to the basic point of the film right from the start, the film takes a lot of time to establish the main story. Though there are couple of interesting moments in the film, but they are too less and far in between to keep you bind throughout the film.
The film tells a story of Armaan [Arshad Warsi], who is having a great life with a good girlfriend Gehna [Dia Mirza] and a paying job. Yet Armaan is struggling with two problems. First being that Armaan hears voices that disturb and torture him and secondly no one can hear these voices apart from only he himself.
Armaan has to face stiff opposition from his girl friend Gehna and her father [Javed Sheikh) both of whom find this behavior wired and irritating. No one understands why Armaan talks to people, whom no one apart from he himself can see.
Soon, Armaan realizes his ability to communicate with those, who are dead and sets-off on a mission to help and fulfill the wishes of three souls, a child, a young women and an old man.
As a viewer, you expect something unusual and interesting after the point when Arshad can see and talk to dead people. Since, the story establishes the fact that Arshad can relate to these souls at just the right point in the film, which gives enough time to the director to incorporate the much needed twists and turns in the film. But, nothing of those sorts happens afterwards, letting you lose interest in the film.
The writers of the film have made the most common mistake that most writers of Bollywood movies tend to make. Rather than keeping their story fixed to Arshad solving the issues of the three dead souls, they have ventured into showing a parallel story of his romance, which was totally unnecessary and makes the film weak and deviate from the main plot. In fact, what these extra bits and pieces in the story have done is that they have taken away time from the director to concentrate and build-up the three stories of the dead in a proper manner.
Certain incidents in the story relating to the old man seem to be unnecessary and forced. You tend to feel that the story of the old man has been made too long only because it involves Boman Irani. It seems that the writers were asked to tell this story in detail because they wanted to cash-in on Boman’s popularity as an actor. But in doing so, the makers have not only made the part featuring Boman a bit boring but also compromised on the story of the child. The part featuring Boman needed to be short and featuring the child should have been long.
The third story of a woman starts off in a great manner but becomes very predictable as it moves on. You can almost guess what is going to happen next.
It is very difficult to judge the direction capacity of Kabeer Kaushik from this film because a weak script and a poor screenplay do not give him the opportunity to show his talent as a director. Whereas Ashok Mehta’s cinematography is good, the music of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy is very ordinary.
The film has good performance from the lead pair of Arshad and Dia, both of whom have shown that they can act. The two have been supported well by Boman Irani and Asawari Joshi. Zehra Naqvi and Javed Sheikh have also given a good performance. But Sandhya Mridul, Shernaz Patel and Tinu Anand have been wasted in the film.
On a whole it’s the bad story and screen play that make Hum Tum Aur Ghost a rather forgettable film to watch,
