Review: Hulla

A full-length feature film on a man and a whistle? After a few chuckles and giggles, you wish they’d bring on the main movie. Doesn’t happen, sighs Khalid Mohamed.

Hulla
Cast: Sushant Singh, Rajat Kapoor
Director: Jaideep Varma
Rating: **

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Ear ear. Jaideep Varma’s Hulla is not the poorer sister of Hulla Bol. It’s not about the good old hulla hoops either. It’s about a man who can’t sleep because a security guard keeps blowing a whistle way beyond midnight. What a fright. Just sit tight, take some cotton buds along. Because they keep blowing the whistle in Dolby surround, and don’t let you sleep either.

Once Bangalore’s Girish Kasaravalli had made the strangest movie ever (called Mane) about snooze-deprived Naseeruddin Shah-Deepti Naval because of machinery sounds. Gratifyingly, machines have given way to whistles. And stick banging, too, in order to nab any Raj Kapoor from Jagte Raho. Oho.

Admittedly, you can identify with the noise business, you go through it every day. Manoj Kumar did too in Shor, Farah Khan too, but a full-length feature film on a man and a whistle? After a few chuckles and giggles, you wish they’d bring on the main movie. Doesn’t happen.

So you’re stuck there with Sushant Singh (Stockbroker) and Kartikadevi Rane (Working Wife). She doesn’t mind the ancient security guard blowing a whistle lustily. Stockbroker does and launches this one-man crusade against whistles, which means combating Rajat Kapoor (Cooperative Housing Society Chairman) trying for a Gujarati accent. In vain.

Anyway, thanks to the believable performances by Stockbroker and Chairman, you don’t actually run out of the auditorium to check your own ear drums. In addition, there’s an excessively funny housing society guy who’s always threatening to tear his shirt. He brings the house down. Indeed, the society meetings are a riot. For such throwaway vignettes, it’s okay to check out this Hullabaloo. Of course, you must carry your own whistles along.