Comedy is characterised by an element of surprise, unpredictability, a turn of phrase, a grimace or a change in body language. Incongruity is an example. Anti-climax is another element that triggers a sense of fun.
Prabhat Roy’s Hangover, sadly, does not have any of these characteristics of comedy except the last – anti-climax, which too, lacks the magic one is looking for in a comedy. Roy, whose Shet Patharer Thala won a National Award had picked a very interesting theme for the film – the post-forties angst of a man who develops a sudden interest in young girls because he is anxious about his dwindling libido. Roy extends the meaning of ‘hangover’ to include the middle-aged male’s renewed interest in every young females of the opposite sex.
Prosenjit as Samaresh Chatterjee plays his real age for the first time. As chairperson of a satellite entertainment company, he keeps leering at pictures of skimpily clad females in newspapers.
Real life parallels of course, are more attractive. Wife Chandana (Subhra) aware of this ‘ailment’ is not happy. Rajeeb (Joy Mukherjee), an executive, brings his girlfriend Mili (Sayantani) to join the firm. He too, is aware of his boss’ weakness but that does not matter to him even when Mili complains that his boss has a strategic eye that lands on strategic points of her attractive body.
Chandana smells an affair and promptly creates a fake affair with Rajeeb to make Samaresh jealous. Samaresh repairs to Mandarmoni, a seaside resort apparently very sad. But the minute his eyes land on four terrible looking ‘models’ in swimsuits, the sadness ends and the leering begins. He also constructs a ‘drama’ about his love for his dear wife by hiring the services of Mitali, another sexy young thing, to make his wife happy. But the cat is out of the bag and Chandana, a partner in the firm, replaces her husband as CEO and demotes him to the position of her secretary!
Roy makes no difference between a ‘dirty middle-aged man’ and a man who has ‘the glad eye’ for nubile young women but is otherwise innocent. Samaresh looks like the dirtiest boss in town. He deliberately drops his pen and crawls under the table to sneak a peak at Mili’s not-very-sexy thighs. His eyes light up like bright stars when the ever-willing Mitali drops her pallu every minute and is quite brazen about it. The line between vulgarity and comedy is very thin.
Prosenjit tries his best to invest the character with some zest but the script treats him unkindly. There are a couple of beautiful scenes showing him break into an impromptu ballroom trot in the privacy of his chamber. It makes him slip into the ‘Prosenjit’ image in dream scenes, each one worse than the other. There is a straight lift from the title song of Om Shanti Om that brings in the Bollywood stars under the same umbrella.
But the picturisation, the choreography and the positioning is terrible. In one song, Roy takes direct potshots at Bengali films that shoot song sequences on foreign locations.
Another dream scene shows the CEO dancing away at the office’s annual function! In another, Samaresh wearing the Krissh eye-patch and Spider-Man costume flies through the air to bash up Rajeev who he thinks, is having an affair with his wife.
Bappa Lahiri’s musical debut does nothing to add to the film. Subhra as Chandana shows promise but the beautiful Sayantika is wasted in an inane role. Joy Mukherjee’s is a cardboard character of a man who has no qualms about using his girlfriend’s beauty as a vertical ladder to success at his job! What more can one say about a ‘comedy’ like this? Give us Pati Patni Aur Woh any day!
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