Hum Tum aur Ghost

Director: Kabeer Kaushik
Lead Cast: Arshad Warsi, Dia Mirza, Boman Irani
Supporting Cast: Sandhya Mridul, Zehra Jane Naqvi
Story: Soumik Sen, Arshad Sayed, Arshad Warsi
Dir. of Photography: Ashok Mehta
Music Director: Shankar Mahadevan, Ehsaan Noorani, Loy Mendonca
Lyrics: Javed Akhtar
There’s a lot of confusion - in the story and in the execution. As is true of many stories that deal with paranormal and mental health, Hum Tum Aur Ghost too, shuttles between the two. Some take sides, some argue it out like a drawing room conversation. Here they don’t do either very intentionally. Which is refreshing but in turn they don’t get the audience involved in the story either.
Unfortunately this is despite trying really hard. Really hard to create sweet moments between Arman and Gehna (Arshad Warsi and Dia Mirza) and friendships between Arman and Mini (Sandhya Mridul) or Arman and Mr. Kapoor (Boman Irani) ; really hard to create comic drama around the mystery surrounding Arman’s “condition”; really hard to make the subject and story interesting.
I felt like a pendulum that sways from subtle comedy to serious drama. And the shifts are pretty abrupt. As abrupt as some of the scenes are stuck together – literally looks like the film was randomly chopped and glued together. It was extremely disorienting.
The entire cast looks like they have made a good-faith attempt at getting into character. You see romance and sweet nothings being exchanged. They should have brought that “aawwww” moments, but no such luck. The emotions look way to superficial.
The saving grace though is that some of the comic lines are as subtly slid in as they are funny - very. But they are also very few and quite far between. And the sudden tone shift between funny and display of emotions doesn’t help either.