An intelligent comical satire

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Phas Gaye Re Obama is perhaps the most intelligent comedy in this year of mindless comedies that made you tear the screen. A comical satire on recession, Phas Gaye Re Obama is special because of its wonderful script that makes you glee with awe and at the same time think. The characters have been woven intelligently, with each gang representing a class in the social hierarchy. Their situations portray how they are hit by the recession.
Bhaishahab (Sanjai Mishra) and his gang represent the bottom of the hierarchy with no bullets in their guns and people refuse to pay ransom. Being at the bottom of the pyramid, they are the ones who had to suffer the most due to this financial mandee.
A level above them is Alibhai (Sumeet Nijhavan), followed by Munni (Neha Dhupia) aka female Gabbar Singh. She is a gangster who hates men and derives pleasure in torturing them.
But the baap of all is a crooked wildlife minister (Amol Gupte) who controls everything including the local police, and eats only vegetables and fruits.
And while these characters make you laugh through their rib-tickling remarks on how America is the cause of recession, Bush, Iraq, Saddam and the “dangerous” FBI, the only intelligent person among them is a recession-struck NRI businessman, who comes back to India to sell his ancestral home in order to pay back his home loan and save his wife and children from being thrown out.
The film tells how good America is in fooling people (here represented as Om Shastri played by Rajat Kapoor). He is smart and always thinks a step ahead, while the bunch of illiterate and dumb Indians (in this case, the gangsters) can’t help but appreciate his “developed mind”. And just like the US President Barack Obama gave America hope to came out of the recession, Shastri comes forward as their Obama (hope) to make some profit in the kidnapping business.
Each actor in the film has done a brilliant job. Writer-director Subhash Kapoor has done a great job here in packing each character with a heavy dose of humour. The characters don’t talk as intelligently as political or financial commentators do, but still raise a lot of uncomfortable questions, be it the kidnapping business in north India or world politics.
In short, Phas Gaye… is more than just another laugh riot with some dumb characters who speaks a funny English (You, baby of a dog), as it doesn’t leave you with any other option but appreciate the effort would have gone to make their dumbness so appealing.