Thursday, August 15, 2024

Phir Hera Pheri (2006)

IMDb plot summary: Baburao, Raju and Shyam are living happily after having risen from rags to riches. Still, money brings the joy of riches and with it the greed to make more money. And so, with a don as an unknowing investor, Raju initiates a new game.
Directed by Neeraj Vora. Starring Akshay Kumar, Suniel Shetty, and Paresh Rawal.

Phir Hera Pheri follows three men who lose all their wealth to an investment scam and get into various hijinks trying to regain that money. This is apparently a sequel, but I haven't seen the original, and while it might be helpful to understand how the characters got to where they are, it's certainly not necessary for character development, as these are incredibly broad characters and problems. The new revelations of dangers and hare-brained schemes to get money felt so repetitive after the first few times, and there wasn't a story arc so much as just an episodic series of events, which is too bad, because I can feel them trying to reach those exaggerated farcical heights where everything gets zanier and zanier until it explodes in chaos at the end. But this plods way too much to get there, most of the jokes don't land (or at least not without a cultural knowledge I don't have), and none of the characters are engaging enough to care about their journey. By far the least interesting of my Bollywood watches this month.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Phir Hera Pheri < Le voyage au Groenland
Phir Hera Pheri < Obvious Child
Phir Hera Pheri > The Last Picture Show
Phir Hera Pheri < The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
Phir Hera Pheri > Simone
Phir Hera Pheri > Nobel Son
Phir Hera Pheri < Easter Parade
Phir Hera Pheri < Freaky Friday (1976)
Phir Hera Pheri > Casino Royale (2006)
Phir Hera Pheri > Suez
Phir Hera Pheri > The Fast and the Furious
Phir Hera Pheri > Abraham Lincoln
Final spot: #3247 out of 3940, or 18%.

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