Tere Bin Laden

If any of you sat through that colossal debacle called Khatta Meetha and swore off comedies (and Akshay Kumar in particular), this review is just to reassure you – that there is comedy beyond the Akshay Kumar/Golmaal brand of slapstick. Which wont make your ears or head hurt – and curse yourself for wasting so much of your time and money. Which will actually make you laugh – from within, genuinely. Presenting, Tere Bin Laden.

A bunch of unknown faces make up this witty little comedy - with a debutant director Abhishek Sharma behind the camera. The only known face is Sugandha Garg - the spunky girl from Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na. The lead actor is actually a pop star in Pakistan – I am sure that is going to raise some eye brows. You’d be more intrigued when I tell you the movie is actually set in Pakistan – though I doubt if they actually shot much there. There are a little too many explosions going on there nowadays for it to be conducive to movie making

Nevertheless, the story is about an America-worshipping young reporter Ali, whose biggest ambition in life is to emigrate to the US of A and become a reporter there. However, he finds himself blacklisted following some comic errors and now he is a reporter for a dilapidated pakistani tv channel run by a crazy boss. However, when he and his sidekick cameraman stumble upon a chicken farmer who looks remarkably like Osama Bin Laden, he thinks he has found the ticket of his dreams. However, he doesn’t have a clue what impact his subsequent actions might have.

As events go out of control, Ali tries desperately to put a lid on things – but as you can imagine, things exactly don’t go according to plan. The comedy of the movie is good and clean – with no reference to homosexuality, or shit or any of the other lame props used in most of our mainstream comedies. The jokes are well spread out and the pace of the movie picks up well after a slightly sluggish start. There is no romantic angle to distract – only over-the-top characters, each of one has his own peculiarity to make you laugh. The chaste Pakistani punjabi also works very well, especially when delivered in form of abuses

Tere Bin Laden works quite well as a funny movie – it has enough original moments which you would chuckle about, much after you leave the theatre. It is a recommended watch for everyone, especially given the dearth of good humorous movies at our box office. What stops this movie from being one of the all-time favourites is its too silly storyline. A slightly more intelligent script and a little more mature humour would probably have made it a masterpiece.