Pizza 3D: Only baby bumps, no goose bumps

Rating: ** Bottom-line: A Delhi Belly revisit will cure your pizza wrought indigestion. The story of the bump bellies below will tell you why. Imran Khan singing the controversial song, ”bhaag bhaag D K Bose Bhaag”, will now acquire yet another meaning after Pizza 3D. It’s likely to be funny or scary depending on how you react to the remake of highly popular Telugu film. The former is more likely. BABY BUMP 1 The first time a Pizza delivery boy, Kunal (Akshay Oberoi, suitable only for TV soaps) encounters a horror moment, the infamous song, ”bhaag bhaag..” is playing on the pretty lady customer’s TV screen. The lady (Dipannita Sharma) is dressed in white silk gown, carries a huge torchlight and sports a big, round pregnant tummy. At one point, the baby bump moves. The poor Pizza boy screams. It’s a wonder, the tummy doesn’t tumble over. Kunal knows now that Imran on TV was telling him to run. But he didn’t run because he did not have 50 bucks change. For that cardinal mistake, he is stuck in this bungalow with several rooms and staircases and over painted bhoots. Ample space for toy cars to move, a stuffed doll to sit on a chair, big worms to crawl out of pizza slices. If that doesn’t freak out the pizza boy, there are screams and musical ring tones. The ring tone is particularly nice, actually. It goes…theher jaa mehrabaan…The phone with lovely ringtone, belongs to the dead lady with baby bump. It’s her jealous husband (Arunoday Singh) at the door, banging away. Pizza boy picks up the phone. Ah, sadly, the song with the sexy voice is interrupted…’ theherjaa’…Soon Pizza boy ..sorry torchlight boy is dealing with two dead bodies inside the house, hammers stuck to their bleeding foreheads, walking up to him out of nowhere and saying “BOO”. This goes on, in slow repeat mode, for the entire first half. A little girl called Anjali has also joined in and insists on calling him papa. The not so happy family is complete. BABY BUMP 2 Kunal’s boss (Rajesh Sharma) sends him to his home to deliver a chocolate box to his wife, Pooja. The wife has an insane look on her face. She screams at Pizza boy that she is Anjali. The boss explains later that the wife is pregnant and a ghost sometimes takes over her senses. He gets a pundit to perform a regular puja to get rid of the ghost. When the pundit asks the wife to reveal something, she gives a really dirty look to the poor pizza boy. He does not need Imran Khan on TV to sing “bhaag bhaag..’ BABY BUMP 3 Kunal has been leading a cosy newly married life with Nikita (Parvathy Omanakuttan, luminous skin). Nikita is a struggling writer. She is in the midst of writing a horror story. She says she find ghosts “cute”. Her room is full of posters like Joan Crawford’s Circulo de Terror to help inspire her story. Enough to give Kunal nightmares of horrific men in elevators. He wakes up to a more dreadful blow when she tells him he is going to be a daddy soon. Thankfully, no tummy sights here. Just those of to-be mommy with some knitting needles. A supposedly horror film is built around three pregnant ladies, a haunted house and a pizza delivery. Sounds okay on paper. On screen, the 3D version, long drawn sound effects, blood and gore bring out laughters instead of shivers. None of the actors can convince otherwise. The first time, director, Akshay Akkineni, already had enough ingredients from the South original. However, the Pizza gets overbaked. By the time, Imran Khan appears again in a rather forced, “look mom, I’m so clever” twist in the end, you know what to do. Bhaag bhaag.. (The writer tries to make peace with her own filmmaking nightmares, of being a scriptwriter, actor and assisting film icons by moonlighting as a film journalist.http://gayatrigauri.blogspot.in)