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36 Farmhouse Review: Subhash Ghai’s tone-deaf comedy drama elicits major disappointment and zero laughs
36 Farmhouse starring Sanjay Mishra, Vijay Raaz, Amol Parashar and Barkha Singh in pivotal roles will stream on an OTT platform from January 21.
36 Farmhouse
Director: Ram Ramesh Sharma
Cast: Sanjay Mishra, Vijay Raaz, Amol Parashar, Barkha Singh, Flora Saini, Madhuri Bhatia, Ashwini Kalsekar
Streaming Platform: Zee5
Rating: 1.5/5
When is it the right time to make a tone-deaf comedy on the acute adversities faced by the country’s underprivileged migrant workers amid a nation-wide lockdown? Never, but certainly not now.
Director Ram Ramesh Sharma’s 36 Farmhouse is a comedy-drama set against the backdrop of the 2020 lockdown, which follows the story of a father-son duo who reach a lavish farmhouse with ulterior motives. However, they find themselves in the midst of a chaos regarding inheritance as three brothers plot against each other to be the legal heirs of the ancestral property.
It was not too long ago when stories and videos of helpless migrant workers walking hundreds of kilometres to their villages were all over the news when the nationwide lockdown left them without a job or shelter. People lost their lives to helplessness and hunger first, while fighting an unprecedented global pandemic.
Writer and producer Subhash Ghai places two of the central protagonists of his film in this stratum of society, yet, he barely scratches the surface. Apart from using a few seconds of actual footage from the news featuring real-life migrant workers at the beginning of the film, Ghai has hardly anything else to offer to let the viewers believe that Harry (Amol Parashar) and his father Jai Prakash (Sanjay Mishra) are similar workers rendered unemployed.
In an interview with a leading news daily, Subhash Ghai had mentioned that he specifically wanted to make a comedy with the backdrop of the pandemic and lockdown. The genre of the movie is hardly the issue, but the lack of dignity and the utter tone-deaf nature in the treatment of its characters is. Even characters who exist for the sole purpose of providing comic relief deserve dignity. It seemed as though Ghai is still experimenting with the humour of the 90s, where infidelity is just another character trait that the viewers are supposed to laugh off.
The film starts with a precise messaging: theft happens either out of need, or out of greed. And Ghai uses two polarising classes of society to drive the point home. However, there is hardly any opportunity for the viewer to sympathise with the people who supposedly lack resources because we don’t get time to invest in their life stories.
Amidst all the comedy, we also get to witness a murder that takes place in the farmhouse. However, there’s hardly any logical line of investigation. One plotline is abruptly abandoned to take you to someplace else, and then you are abandoned there as well. The comedy is dated, much like the placement of random songs in the middle of the movie.
There is Vijay Raaz, who plays Raunak Singh, the eldest of the three sons, who wants to inherit their rich and ailing mother’s property. The otherwise talented actor cannot do much to elevate the poorly executed, and the same goes for Sanjay Mishra. Years of experience of both actors are laid to waste in this haywire structuring of sub-plots. Barkha Singh and Amol Parashar try to deliver to the best of their potential; however, this is definitely not one of their better performances.
As you finish the film, you wonder what exactly did adding the migrant worker touch bring to the table? The plot would have worked out the same in any other context too. The half-hearted treatment of the topic at hand, only adds to the disappointment.
We have many memorable films to thank Subhash Ghai for. Unfortunately, 36 Farmhouse is not one of them.
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