Ghoomketu Review: A Laughter We Deserve But Full Of Derogatory Jokes

Rating: 2/5

Directed by Pushpendra Nath Mishra, Ghoomketu, which finally released on ZEE5 after a waiting period of 5 years, stars Nawazuddin Siddiqui in the titular role of a 31-year-old aspiring Bollywood writer who flees his village, Mohena in Uttar Pradesh to realise his dream in Mumbai.

The Nawazuddin Siddhiqui starrer revolves around a small-town man aspiring to achieve big and reaches Mumbai with a big metal trunk and a military holdall. The movie is absolutely amazing and the dialogues surely are catchy. 

Dadda (Raghubir Yadav), Ghoomketu's father, is a typical middle-class father who is never impressed by his son. A widower once, he remarries to find new love but only to be disappointed. Ghoomektu has an angel in his aunt Santo Bua (Ila Arun). She is loud and has a bizarre problem that we leave for you to find out. Ghoomketu's uncle, Guddan Chacha (Swanand Kirkire) is an MLA who becomes a politician by accident, which is also quite interesting. If you thought that Ghoomketu is yet to marry, then you are wrong. He gets married in a samuhik vivah (group wedding) where his bride gets exchanged.

He not only body shames the bride, he also refuses to see her face because she isn't the svelte young lass he expected her to be. That is where he loses us. Within days of the marriage, Ghoomketu, egged on by aunt Santo (Ila Arun), flees to Mumbai with the family photo album.

Surrounded by innumerable caricatures for characters, Siddiqui is earnest and tries to make the most of being the centre of the film’s universe. Nawazuddin is as natural as ever. One cannot differentiate the actor from the character he is playing.

Ghoomketu isn’t exactly a replacement for Salim-Javed, or, for that matter, Neeraj Vora. He comes up with dull melodramas and horror films that don’t frighten anybody. The ideas that have some traction are the ones about his eccentric family and their escapades.

For a simple fable-like story, the film has a crucial reliance on blue humour for laughs. One of Ghoomketu’s ‘ghazals’ ends with the line “May you never say f**k off" – repeated thrice.

The film does take you on a comedy ride.

A few of the jibes are borderline funny but this story of a nondescript wordsmith who wants to script a new life in tinsel town is inordinately desultory. 

Even the decision to include some of the most popular actors in the industry in cameos works for the film. Sneha Khanvilkar and Jasleen Royal's music adds the required punch to the story and mixes well with the narrative.

Amitabh Bachchan, too, steps in to provide a fillip to the film's flagging fortunes. He plays himself donning the garb of a prosecution lawyer in a film-within-the-film. Chitrangada Singh and Lauren Gottlieb pop up too for blink-and-miss appearances. But all this adds no lasting lustre to the all-round vacuity.

Ghoomketu is the dose of laughter each one of us deserve in these testing times. With such brilliant performances by Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Raghubir Yadav, it did great.

Although the film strives very hard to stand out, its legs are not strong enough to hold the weight of its ambition.