rected by Priyadarshan
Rating: *

There is only one reason to bear through this insufferable mumbojumbo of tantra, mantra and para-psychology.

And it's not Akshay Kumar. Sure.f His comic timing remains supremely impeccable. Akshay has lately become a fearless actor. He drops his guards, towel, inhibitions, the works in front of the camera.

But we've seen him do all of this many times over. And a sense of predictability has now crept into the way he laughs, the way he stops just a split second before exhaling the guffaw, or the way he lifts his bare feet before the camera and yawns.

Yup, in Bhool Bhulaiyaa he does it all and brings the house down.

Naturally. But once he gets down to playing the serious psychologist doing an Exorcist on the poor possessed US-returned Vidya Balan, you wonder if there's a serious smirk secreted in the knee-jerk horror comredy.

Welcome to the house of horrors with the ghost of a wronged tawaif cursing abusing singing and dancing in Bengali.

By the time the buck stops at Vidya Balan as the ghost in the closet we've had just about enough of the Priyadarshan regular, from the reliable Mohan Joshi, to the getting-loose-limbed Paresh Rawail (what is he doing playing all these badly written characters these days?) to the insufferable Rasika Joshi to the unusually unfunny Rajpal Yadav ....we've had just about enough of Priyadarshan's patented parody, this time projected into a story that seems to endorse blind faith and black magic.

So guys, do you believe in ghosts? I stopped believing in them when I saw Ram Gopal Varma's Bhoot. Bhool Bhulaiyaa just makes you wish ghosts would haunt the people who thought up this piece of odd abomination.

As usual Priyadrashan spends a lot of time in detailing trivia which finally adds up to much ado about absolutely nothing. The characters of the village are piled on for about 30 minutes of playing time. Another 30 minutes goes into introducing the wacky inmates of the ancestral haveli. That's when Akshay Kumar makes his entry.

The film is initially shot on the ghats of the holy Ganga. Suddenly we see deserts, ethic clothes and....well, no camels.

Sorrrrrrrreeeeee. No Oscar, Priyanji.

So coming to the one quality in this film that keeps you watching to its feel-crude finale is Vidya Balan.

As a woman- possessed she pours so much intense energy into her raging Kathak dance in the demented courtesan's domain, you forgive Priyadarshan all his trespasses of vulgar excesses.

Vidya brings a great deal of charm elegance and horrific angst to her part. As she swirls and twirls as the Rage Nartaki in a jealous king's sabha with her equally twinkle-toed lover she appears just so lovely in this distinctly un-lovely film.

Kichad mein Kamal Haasan?

Technically the film substitutes genuine aesthetics with dashes of flamboyance selected from all the haunted-haveli films from Madhumati to Mehbooba. The ghungroo ki cham-cham sounds as fake as the cham-chama-cham that adorn the walls of the abandoned haveli.

The art decorator avoids the cliché of the cobwebs on the walls. Those appear to be surrounding the brains behind this grandma's oily tale.

The haveli swarms with oddballs of every gender and hue. The basic question, who needs psychiatric help, becomes redundant after a point.

Every seems insane. Ironically Vudya Balan who turns out to be mentally sick emerges with the most graceful presence in this congregation of cuckoos from la-la land.

Grace under pressure,yes? None more pressurized than the audience who must bear with Priyadarshan's tormenting seemingly endless treatise on andh vishwas.

Go see a DVD of Madhumati instead.