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Loud, uninhibited and bursting with manic energy, Raghav Juyal embraces Bhai Tera Star Hai’s film’s outrageous tone. But Niharika NM suffers from an undercooked character.
Raghav Juyal and Niharika NM starrer Bhai Tera Star Hai is now running in cinemas.
Bhai Tera Star HaiA
2.5/5
Starring: Raghav Juyal, Sanjay Kapoor, Niharika NM, Niki Walia and Chandan Roy SanyalDirector: Vivek B AgrawalMusic: Amit Trivedi
Bhai Tera Star Hai Movie Review: In a scene in Bhai Tera Star Hai, an acting coach-turned-cop tells Raghav Juyal’s Ajay Singh, ‘Itna loud acting kyun kar raha hai?’ Well, that pretty much sums up the film. This is a film about theatrics and histrionics, chaotic situations and physical comedy. More aptly, it’s like an Akshay Kumar-esque narrative from the 2000s.
There’s a frenzied game of cat-and-mouse unravelling here, centered around missing cash and non-stop blunders. The plot is pure slapstick pandemonium, where everyone owes the other person money, nobody tells the truth and everything goes wrong at once. It almost works and then it doesn’t. It works because the makers are unapologetic about what they’re making.
Bhai Tera Star Hai doesn’t aspire to be more than what it is and it’s this self-awareness that you need to believe in before you go in. It never pretends to be a high-stakes, ambitious entertainer. Instead it’s content being an unabashed slapstick comedy and stays true to that brief. It’s silly, goofy, eccentric, delightful in parts and doesn’t feel the need to reinvent the wheel.
Bhai Tera Star Hai movie plot
Set in London, Bhai Tera Star Hai revolves around Ajay, as aspiring actor, who wields delusion like a sword. He’s the king of his own universe and describes himself as a ‘rocking, sexy star’. The film unravels over a span of a few hours during Christmasttime in the British capital and we quickly learn that Ajay owes Fatty, a bar owner, 10000 pounds.
A circus begins as Fatty’s right-hand man named JD is made to accompany Ajay and see to it that he brings back the amount before the clock strikes 12:30 am. And how does the otherwise broke Ajay intend on recovering this money? He lies to his girlfriend Roshni that he needs the money to terminate his sister Natasha’s pregnancy. He also lies to his sister that he needs financial help to abort his girlfriend’s baby.
Thrown into this mix is JD’s girlfriend Chandni, Chandi’s teenage brother, Roshni’s brother Sid, Sid’s potential girlfriend Laila and Fatty’s wife Mandy. To help his sister terminate her pregnancy, Sid and Laila set out pub crawling. Their mission? Sid has to get back the money that he had lent to all the bar owners in the city.
What works for the film
Bhai Tera Star Hai is riddled with silly meta jokes. In a scene in the film, Ajay announces, ‘Meri entry late ho sakti hai, lekin disappointing nahi.’ It’s a deliciously sly nod to Raghav’s 16-year-old career that has led him to headline a film for the first time. We also learn that Ajay is prepping to audition for Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Behen where he’s playing ‘Bhaijaan’s bhai’.
In another scene, Sanjay Kapoor’s Fatty is advised to be healthier like Anil Kapoor, his real-life elder brother who has earned the prefix of ‘ageless’. But this isn’t a flawless film. Sometimes, what seems clever on paper may necessarily not appear onscreen in the same way. And Bhai Tera Star Hai is proof. Far too often, it confuses noise with comedy.
Who doesn’t work
Many scenes exist only to generate laughs, yet they fall flat. Rather than serving the narrative, they stretch the runtime and leave the screenplay feeling bloated. And that’s why even at 1 hour 45 minutes, Bhai Tera Star Hai feels overlong. The overcrowded ensemble only compounds the problem, leaving little room for individual characters or comic moments to breathe.
At other times, the film feels incoherent, though one could argue that the chaos is intentional. We understand that comedy often thrives on awkward, offbeat timing but here, that offbeat rhythm rarely pays off. And that’s why even jokes such as ‘tu woh Ajay hai jiske kismat mein jhol hai, Kajol nahi’ that gets randomly thrown at you don’t yield the response they had set out for.
To make matters worse, the narrative leans heavily on background music and sound cues borrowed from viral Instagram reels, a gimmick that quickly wears thin instead of enhancing the humour. By setting the story within an NRI community, Bhai Tera Star Hai taps into a milieu that mainstream Bollywood has surprisingly moved away from in recent years.
But this diaspora backdrop lacks texture. This is no Total Siyappa, another Hindi film that unfolds over a span of a night. Here, the setting doesn’t feel lived-in. The makers choose to not delve deep into cultural quirks, family dynamics and diaspora sensibilities. And that’s why the gags don’t emerge from character quirks. The only anomaly in this regard is Ajay.
Most of the humour feels manufactured to evoke laughter. And this is largely why the film fizzles out. But credit lies where it’s due. Bhai Tera Star Hai culminates in a classic comedy-of-errors finale, where every character converges at the same location, each armed with incomplete information, setting off a shouting match and a cascade of misunderstandings.
Unfortunately, this madcap climax comes after a series of flat comic sequences and it barely feels like a rich pay-off. Having said that, the strongest link of the film is Raghav. He elevates the screenplay in more ways than one. Loud, uninhibited and bursting with manic energy, he embraces the film’s outrageous tone without a hint of self-consciousness.
His exaggerated antics and comic timing keep the performance consistently entertaining. One of the running gags that works is his misplaced smartness. His perpetual overconfidence and inevitable humiliation make for some of the biggest laughs. The others, however, don’t really leave an impact, including Niharika NM, who makes her Bollywood debut with this film.
Screen time isn’t really in her favour here and even in the scenes where she appears, she doesn’t get to do anything and that stems from an undercooked character. The love story between Barkha Singh’s Laila and Vivan Bhatena’s Sid and the constant bickering between Sanjay’s Fatty and Niki Walia’s Mandy don’t lend anything to the narrative either.
Bhai Tera Star Hai cast performances
Vikalp Mehta as JD and Parvathy Omanakuttan as Natasha join forces with Raghav and give it their all. Chandan Roy Sanyal and Tina Desai, on the other hand, aren’t too memorable. The reason for that is the inconsistent, half-baked and over-stuffed screenplay. And that’s why, despite a promising premise and a refreshing setting, it’s not something you’ll carry home.
Final verdict
Bhai Tera Star Hai feels like a missed opportunity for a genuinely funny entertainer. It has all the ingredients for a laugh riot but the writing rarely rises to the occasion. Raghav throws himself wholeheartedly into the madness but even his committed, scene-stealing performance cannot compensate for a screenplay that lacks the punch and edge.
About the Author
Titas Chowdhury is a Special Correspondent at News18 Showsha. She writes about cinema, music and gender in cinema. Interviewing actors and filmmakers, writing about latest trends in showbiz and bringi…Read More
