It’s as high concept as a modest Bollywood movie can get – a magical notebook, which makes what is written in it happen. In Rahu Ketu, scripted and directed by Vipul Vig, a writer (Manu Rishi Chadha) is gifted the notebook by his nomadic uncle (Piyush Mishra), who speaks in riddles and claims be the commander of Emperor Alexander who was left behind in India.
With a spectacular lack of creativity, the writer creates a modern-day Rahu and Ketu (Pulkit Samrat, Varun Sharma) inspired by the mythological characters. Like the originals, these two bring bad luck wherever they go.
They are shunned by the villagers in Himachal, where they have landed. After a bit of pointless tomfoolery, the local femme fatale, Meenu (Shalini Pandey) rides in. Skimpily dressed when everybody else is bundled up, she strings along Rahu and two cartoonish cops (Amit Sial, Sumit Gulati). She ends up stealing the magic book, in the hope of taking over the drug business run by the Israeli Mordechai (Chunky Panday), whose name is mangled by everyone.
In spite of Varun Sharma’s heavy lifting – he gets into the spirit of silliness more easily – and a fair amount of exertion by the other actors, Rahu Ketu simply refuses to be anything more than sporadically funny. The Himachal scenery does more for the film than its inane story. A sequel is on the cards – beware, Bollywood!
