297. Delhi Belly

Third time lucky! After two abortive trips to see Delhi Belly I find discovered that, as the poster predicts, bad things happen.
Unfortunately, that's not in a good way.
I still lack confidence in some of my reviews of Indian cinema because the culture, and in this case the humour, is so different to that in the west.
Thus, I caught up with a couple of reviews of Abhinay Deo's movie to see how it is being perceived.
It universally gets decent marks because it is seen as something excitingly different.
Firstly, it is almost entirely in English. Here's me kicking off about sub-titles not having been available at Cineworld last week and it turns out 80 per cent of this film is in my native language.
This is unusual and I'm not sure whether that gives the script writers to throw in a long list of expletives.
Secondly, it is being hailed as American Pie-like in its humour. The thing is that American Pie was 12 years ago. It's just not fresh any more. We've lived through the likes of the Hangover since then.
Just because jokes are crude and sexual doesn't make them funny.
In my opinion Delhi Belly is disjointed and daft.
There is only so far you can go with a storyline about diarrhoea. It's a busted flush if it drags on for more than a couple of gags. In this case it lasts for more than an hour and a half.
So what is the plotline? Well, three housemates get in a tangle with some hardened criminals when the delivery of a package gets mixed up with a stool sample.
We know this because the wrong package was opened and spilled out across a table...lovely!
It turns out the other parcel contained smuggled contraband.
All of this results in a movie in which one minute the gangsters are smashing people's heads in and in the next a stomach is gurgling and a toilet is being pebbledashed.
The breakneck speed of it all means that character development is minimal. For a comedy to be successful, the audience needs to be empathising with the lead actors.
Neither Imran Khan, Vir Das nor Paresh Ganatra won me over.
It being Bollywood there was a love interest, this time in the shape of Poorna Jagannathan but with the exception of one clear use of tongue, the romance is tepid.
So, I hear people have left the cinema rolling about laughing.
Not me, I'm afraid. The laughometer recorded one stifled giggle and, otherwise, I spent most of the time looking at my watch.
Rating? A disappointing 4/10