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Not. Funny.

I was superbly excited to see Shahid Kapoor back on screen. I skipped Mausam because I refused to take on overdose of Sonam Kapoor, but Ileana is bearable. Thus after the oh-so-brilliant The Lunchbox, I headed for Phata Poster Nikla Hero (PPNH). What happened? Nothing much - my headache returned with a vengeance.

Vishwas Rao (Shahid Kapoor) wants to be an actor. His mother (Padmini Kolhapure) wants her son to be a cop. Vishwas manages to evade all opportunities till he lands up in Mumbai and is caught off-guard in a cop uniform and inadvertently ends up doing some good. Kajal (Ileana D’Cruz) keeps dragging the fake cop into rescue missions and the rightly thrown punches and kicks makes the local don Gundappa (Saurabh Shukla) sit up and pay attention. 

Then there’s the elusive master criminal Napoleon who is heading an operation called the White Elephant and Gundappa and his motley crew are a part of it. So - Vishwas must keep playing cop as his mother lands up in Mumbai; he is pulled into the chaos from both ends as the force and the criminals decide to use him for their best ends. That is PPNH for you.

Don’t expect the world from this Santoshi flick. Is it more fun than Ajab Prem ki Ghazab Kahani - I don’t like Katrina so yes, it is. Ileana can at least pretend to act and doesn’t have a painful accent. Kapoor is fun to watch - he does his comedy well and he puts his dance skills to great use.
Tu Meri Agal Bagal Hai
is a riot and so is Dhating Naach but I wish Nargis Fakhri wasn’t in it.

Kapoor manages to play his part well, he makes the right faces, he charms and he fights. Pretty much everything that heroes do. Kolhapure is supposed to be a fiercely independent mother in the film, but she looks far too lost in scenes. You cannot quite connect the auto-driving mother with the weepy-lost one. D’Cruz is sufficiently bubbly but here we give credit where it is due - Kaif does the ‘Oh-shit’ expression better than her. There’s also a small cameo by Salman Khan which is quite funny.  

PPNH has some good soundtracks and surprisingly the song sequences don’t last forever and Santoshi allows you to return to the story quickly enough - but that is hardly solace. The plot is contrived and at times boring.  

The jokes don’t make you laugh as much and very often the movie just drags. It could have wrapped up a good 30 mins earlier. The action is good but this trademark comedy-action sequence is a tad-bit overdone. We could have done without the weepy mother-son melodrama. 

PPNH is very predictable. The Lunchbox will get the crores this week it seems. 

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