Movie Review : OMG – Oh My God

[amazon_link id=”B009SLANLI” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ][/amazon_link]Rating : 3.2/5
Genre : Drama
Year : 2012
Running time : 2 hours 10 minutes
Director : Umesh Shukla
Cast : Akshay Kumar, Paresh Rawal, Mithun Chakraborty,
Kid rating : PG-13

Kanjibhai (Rawal) is a wily shop-owner selling people devotional statues and objects, under a pretension of great bhakti. After a sudden earthquake, his shop is destroyed and he wishes for compensation from God. He files a court case against God, and all the known Gurus and Babas come to court to defend God’s side of things. Kanjibhai will not be appeased though. Then, the Lord himself comes to earth in the guise of a human in an attempt to show foolish Kanjibhai the error of his ways.

The film is the remake of a Gujrati drama. It is a very unsubtle and shoddy remake, I might add, and seems very TV serial like. I believe the film’s story has a greater message, but it is hammered in by over-the-top, black-and-white, cardboardish characters. What the characters did and why was beyond reasoning, and there wasn’t any structure or flow to the events in the film. They just happened, and were generally accompanied by great, loud yammering dialogues; you get tired after a while listening to unreasonable people who seem to have lost their marbles.

Yes, kurta clad Akshay Kumar is God, for who after all could look more Godly than him? Keep in mind all his antics in films like Khiladi786, Housefull etc. Akshay dons his Godly persona like so much makeup. He smiles and smiles in the film, very benignantly; I imagine he though it made him seem more celestial. Me – all I could do was note that his teeth ended in very sharp points.

Paresh Rawal is the wily Kanjibhai, unwilling to listen to reason even when everyone berates him, and his wife and kids leave him. Rawal is a great actor but he is always given these ham-handed roles. There isn’t one likeable character in the entire film, and smarmy Akshay Kumar in full Bhagwan-style regalia had me doubled up in laughter.

This film is far from divine. You could call it passable at best.