Life is all about worshipping One, hating none. Submitting yourself to the will of the Almighty because He alone knows what is best for us. Yet man is foolhardy enough to believe that he can step beyond his mortal being, decide what is good for him, be the master of his destiny. Not to be. The pawn can never succeed the King…. That sums up Rumi Jafry’s long delayed ‘God Tussi Great Ho,’ a film that comes with dollops of trademark Salman Khan humour.
It is also a film that makes a colossal waste of Amitabh Bachchan’s enviable talent. If the film is all about projecting the power of the divine, the director commits a no mean crime by under-utilising Bachchan to the extent that you end up feeling, ‘Hey! Have we come to see a Salman solo?’
However, though weak in script and floundering with forgettable dialogue, the film has several perky moments. Salman plays an electronic media journalist who must come up with a show that gets the best TRPs. With him is his colleague, Priyanka Chopra, who delivers the same even as the guy fumbles badly. Every time he fails, he blames it on the Almighty – played with poise by Bachchan.
When his dad screams at him for doing nothing, the Almighty is to be blamed. When his boss fires him, God is to take the flak! All until one day God decides that He will temporarily give His powers to this floundering man!
It is a nice premise, amply borrowed from ‘Bruce Almighty.’ However, despite situational humour a la Salman, the film falls short — way too short.
When all that the director needed was a focused narration of the evolving relationship between man and God, he introduces a love triangle – Sohail Khan, with his usual corny fare, wants Priyanka too! Then the director adds some lustreless songs that do nobody any favours. Except those popcorn stalls in the cinema lobby which are frequented by people to get rid of the boredom of pedestrian music.
Even as Salman goes from one mistake to another, then redeems himself in the nick of time, Bachchan as God just stands and stares, almost a bystander to the fortunes of earth’s denizens. He is too shackled to lift the film in his sporadic and fleeting appearances.
As for Salman, he does his screech-and-scream routine, the kind of good-boy-bad-boy thing he specialises in.
Bina Kak, however, slides into the sandals of a good old Bollywood mother with laddoos and puja ki thali with ease. And Anupam Kher hams the way he has been doing for more than two decades.
Sorry, but this take on man and God has no divinity about it. And not enough clean laughs to last the distance. A few moments of mirth and merriment is all it offers for two hours of mediocrity. Worship the Almighty at home rather than waste your time seeing His supremacy on the big screen.
