Review : Roohi by Jyothi Venkatesh

Producer- Dinesh Vijan and Mrighdeep Singh Lamba

Director- Hardik Mehta

Star Cast- Rajkummar Rao, Varun Sharma, Janhavi Kapoor , Manav Vij,  Sarita Joshi and Alexx O'nell

Genre- Horror

Rating- ** (Two)

Implausible & Illogical

Jyothi Venkatesh

You walk in to the theater heavily anticipating that you will get to see a great film, especially since this film Roohi has been pitched as an outing from the same universe as the spectacular Stree (2018), which was also headlined by Rajkummar Rao and it has been directed by none other than craftsman Hardik Mehta, who had churned out just last year the heartwarming Kaamyaab , but then take it from me, forget about getting one notch above Stree, the film Roohi is just about a routine fare and isn’t even as sharp as Stree.

To put it succinctly, all said and done, Roohi which had been earlier titled as Roohi Afza, in spite of chills and thrills galore.

Roohi just about falls short on the smarts and makes you want more and leave the theatre on a note of yearning for better stuff.

The film is set in the fictitious town Baagadpur shown through the eyes of a foreign journalist (Alex Onell) to impress upon the audience the sordid blasphemy of the tradition of pakad shaadi prevalent in the town, which makes you recall a similar dud film on the abduction of bridegrooms called Jodi.

A weird character –a local goon called Guniya Shakil (Manav Vij) runs an agency on contract, which thrives on kidnapping young girls on the behest of suitors.

Two small-town boys, Bhaura Pandey (Rajkummar Rao) and Kattanni Qureshi (Varun Sharma), are stuck with Roohi (Janhvi Kapoor) under strange circumstances.

Bhaura Pandey and Kattanni Quereshi, by the way, work for Guniya and regularly run errands for them, including kidnapping.

The biggest tragedy about the script of the film is that it has far too many glaring inconsistencies that no amount of good acting or for that matter great direction can iron it out.

We are not at all able to ferret our much about who or what Roohi is before she is kidnapped in broad daylight by the goons except for the fact that she is a reticent girl who doesn’t get treated very well by her extended family.

Believe it or not, Roohi has two different personalities merged inside her and it is the unbridled evil witch inside her that emboldens Roohi, gives her the fierce fighting spirit which is missing in her.

Now in a rather bewildering but unpredictable turn of events in the plot, while Bhaura develops feelings for Roohi, and Kattanni falls for Afza, her alter personality.

In what can be termed a bizarre turn of events, Bhaura wants to get rid of Afza, while Kattani wants to make sure she lives on so that he can romance

Rajkkumar Rao is okay but there is a certain kind of strain which is visible when he tries to recreate a similarity between his role in Stree and Roohi while Varun shines with his great comic timing and pitch-perfect expressions, even though he is loud most of the times flaunts his flair for comedy.

Whether as Roohi or Afza, there is a vast improvement in the acting skills of Janhavi Kapoor who does not let down her real mother actress Sridevi in this outing which is a very big challenge for her as she has to appear ugly with scars and eerie lines on her face as Afza the spirit.

To sum up, what the film lacks is a deeper narrative but the editing leaves a lot to be desired, with a running time of over two hours, though with a rather implausible and illogical overbearing plot.