Child’s play gone wrong

Hari Puttar
Cast: Zain Khan, Sarika, Swini Khara
Director: Lucky Kohli, Rajesh Bajaj
Rating: *

What an agonising Friday with two dismal releases, starting with Hari Puttar, a disastrous attempt at ripping off the Macaulay Culkin starrer Home Alone.

Zain Khan, as Hari Prasad Dhoonda or Hari Puttar, may have made a competent and sincere effort, but a child actor with limited experience cannot be expected to carry a pot-holed film like this on his young shoulders. And why is Swini Khara, as Hari's cousin Tuk Tuk, always cast as a sickly child?

The film is set in a sprawling English stately home where Hari and Tuk Tuk are left behind when the rest of the family of mothers, aunts, uncles, stepchildren, brothers and sisters rush off on a trip. While the clan is en route to visiting Hari's father, who is working at an army camp in Northern England, the two kids are rejoicing at their temporary freedom.

But when two burglars attempt to steal a 'computer chip' (which looks like a pen drive) from the house, Tuk Tuk and Hari are forced to use their toys and ingenuity to foil the robbery.

If the makers had stuck to the battle between the wannabe gangster robbers (Saurabh Shukla and Vijay Raaz) rather than introducing other random and useless characters, the children in the audience might at least have had a few laughs.

Instead, this is a confused mess with gags dependent on flatulence, the bad guys swearing (which has been beeped out, but we can read lips), and references to Sholay, which children today are unlikely to connect with. From this the film makes a feeble effort at moralising and waxing eloquent on the virtues and value of mothers.

Live action is interrupted by two animated characters narrating the story and blatantly whipping out packets of biscuits in a product placement commercial break. The script is incomprehensible — really if you were going to copy a film, why not stick to the successful original rather than make a feeble attempt at tweaking it and introducing Bollywood clichés like the grandfather who is now a star and a gangster who speaks like Loin Ajit.