Fugay review: Welcome to Swapnil Joshi, Subodh Bhave's dull bachelor party

Since Hollywood director Todd Phillips let the ‘Wolfpack’ loose on unsuspecting film-goers in the Hangover series, the practice of bachelor-bachelorettes has gained quite a bit of attention, and sometimes even cinematic treatment. Zoya Akhtar made a whole film centred on a bachelor trip — Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011). More recently, web series The Trip starring Lisa Haydon, Mallika Dua, Sapna Pabbi and Shweta Tripathi explored how young women go about the whole pre-wedding jingbang.

How could Marathi cinema be left behind? So Swapnil Joshi and Subodh Bhave came up with the story of two childhood friends going on a bachelor’s trip and cast themselves in what should have been a Hangover with a desi twist but ends up being a wannabe Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara-meets-Dostana.

Aditya (Joshi) and Hrishikesh (Bhave) are friends who have been raised as brothers after Hrishikesh’s mother passed away while he was still a child. In a photo album Aditya’s mother is showing to his fiancee Jaai (Prarthana Behere), we see Aditya dressed in girl’s clothes because his mother always wanted one. The mother even addresses him by a girl’s name ‘Babdi’. As the beginning credits roll, a flashback of this Karan-Arjun’s childhood, youth and adulthood unfolds as the song ‘Yeh bandhan toh pyaar ka bandhan hai’ from the 1995 film plays.

While Jaai is possessive about Aditya, she ‘allows’ him to go on a bachelor’s party to Goa on a few conditions. On reaching Goa all conditions are quickly forgotten, however. The young men start acting like those lecherous tourists who stare at foreigners and are the reason women feel unsafe in India. A night of debauchery (yawn), matching tattoos, no memory of what transpires (double yawn) and finally Jaai landing up in Goa to misunderstand and break off the engagement is nothing we haven’t seen on screen before. So the audience is expected to express surprise even when nothing new happens.

Back home in Pune, the news that Aditya and Hrishikesh are gay spreads like wild fire and ridicule is the order of the day. They don’t even attempt to explain the situation because they don’t remember anything that happened that night. So original, you think. Hrishikesh finally lands up in Goa again to find the missing pieces of the puzzle. Here he finds Kamini (Neetha Shetty). By this time, you don’t even want to know what happened or who is Kamini. 

While Joshi and Bhave are confident as close friends, their camaraderie is sometimes too sweet to be true. The ladies, Behere and Shetty, get barely a few scenes to show their talent. The veteran Mohan Joshi is reduced to character acting and wasted as Hrishikesh’s father. Lack of depth for any of the characters, including the leading men, is Fugay's biggest drawback. 'Hey Fugay’ and ‘Kahi Kale Tula’ are soothing melodies but seem out of place in the film.

Repetitive dialogue, a bland screenplay and ‘Jaai’ used as a running joke make the script cringe-worthy and boring. The possible play on words in the title Fu‘gay’ falls flat too. What was meant to be light as a helium balloon is reduced to a jarring mess with a bunch of stereotypical characters. Some original writing and desi comedic scenes could have made Fugay enjoyable. But it remains the most flaccid, unoriginal bachelor party you could have ever attended. 

Reviewed by Blessy Chettiar