Mr Bhushan, yeh dil maange more

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Having seen Bharat Bhushan in Bheja Fry, as the audience you are forced to draw comparisons between what you saw in the original and what you see in its sequel Bheja Fry 2. And while drawing comparisons, you not only expect the same buffoonery, of course, but something more than that.

You expect him to be well-combed and his hair well-oiled, and you know that he will help people and try to solve their problems without anybody even asking for it. You know he will share a lot of trivia and ask a lot of personal questions.
Vinay Pathak as Bharat Bhushan does all that in Bheja Fry 2, but leaves you asking for more. He has an old Hindi song ready for every occasion and sings it without asking. He does all the stupid things you don’t want him to do. And while doing so, Bharat Bhushan takes the cake in buffoonery, but this time around, he does it less annoyingly.
Why so? Well, Bharat Bhushan, who is basically a compilation of all the idiots that you may have ever known or known of, including yourself, has somehow lost his touch. He is supposed to be clingy, dim-witted, irksome and annoying to the core, and he is, but lesser than what he was in Bheja Fry. It’s not that he has become smarter or learnt some lessons from his experience with Rajat Kapoor, it’s just that he is still the same Bharat Bhushan. But as the audience you want more, and this is where the disappointment begins.
Bharat Bhushan who’s looking for ways to fulfil his dream of releasing his music album wins a TV reality show. He meets Minissha Lamba, the executive director of the show, and slowly begins to like her. He wins a cash prize of `25 lakhs and a paid stay in a cruise ship. In the background there’s Kay Kay, a young CEO, who’s running five bogus companies and does everything to escape the income tax department. Having heard of income tax raids, Kay Kay goes on a trip to the cruise to avoid the raids. Here he meets Bharat Bhushan, who happens to be an income tax inspector. This forces Kay Kay to plan his murder by throwing him off the ship.
The disappointments continue with the new characters in Bharat Bhushan’s life, be it Kay Kay Menon who believes that he has to lie to get ahead in the world, and unlike Bharat Bhushan, believes that intelligence is not something you learn from books, but from real life. Or Minissha Lamba, or even Amol Gupte as the Bengali photographer who hates city life and lives alone on an island. You miss the plain seriousness with which Rajat Kapoor made fun of Bharat Bhushan in Bheja Fry. Kay Kay Menon’s character in this case comes out a little too strong.
They are important characters for the story to move on, but they all are unknowingly sympathetic towards Bharat Bhushan and his idiocy. And this is perhaps another thing that kills the joy. But then again, it’s not obvious if you don’t start thinking deeply about the plot and the scenes and comparing it to how amused you felt when you saw the idiot for the first time on screen.
The point is Bheja Fry 2 hasn’t got any better or worse than what the audiences saw in Bheja Fry. It’s still the same but the comparisons to Bheja Fry kill it, which is usually the case with most sequels.
However, you do miss certain actors from Bheja Fry. Especially Ranvir Shorey, whose portrayal of the evil-minded, but honest-to-his work, income-tax officer, was far superior in comparison to what Suresh Menon is offering in Bheja Fry 2. Not that Menon has done a bad job, but the mark that Shorey left as the slightly smart friend of Bharat Bhushan is hard to forget.
Bheja Fry 2 is one of the top winners among all the comedies released this year, and if you stop comparing, you will enjoy it even more.