Papi Gudia

It's easy to see why the 1996 Bollywood movie Papi Gudia has enjoyed some minor interest among English language movie review sites this year. The synopsis is the stuff that bad movie dreams are made of: remake Child's Play as a Bollywood musical.

Obviously no one in their right mind would ever think Chucky needed his own musical, and no one in their right minds was involved in making this movie. It becomes clear pretty quickly that no one with any talent was involved either. Even the DVD is terrible; the movie looks and sounds pretty bad from a technical standpoint, and the transfer is terrible too. The movie is from 1996 but it looks like it came from the 1970s.
 
In addition, the timer on the DVD was completely wrong and showed the movie being only 90 minutes long. If only that were true! This left me feeling like I was trapped in some kind of movie hell, unable to determine how many minutes of suffering I had left to endure. For the record the movie lasts a soul-crushing 131 minutes, but it feels much longer.

On to the film itself. A crazed evil sorcerer/killer tries to steal children from the creepiest child talent show in the world but he gets caught by the police. After engaging in one of the worst gunfights ever committed to film, the mortally wounded killer takes a very long time transferring his evil self to the least creepy looking doll in the entire toy store.

Then we cut to what could be the worst Bollywood musical number I've ever seen; this is simply jaw-droppingly bad stuff. Karisma (played by Karisma Kapoor of Bollywood’s legendary Kapoor family) gives this song and dance number her all, but considering her astonishing lack of talent this scene is going to impress you in all the wrong ways. And the outfits! At one point a combination of horrible clothing choices and bad lighting make it look like she's being eaten by a giant silver alien made of space-age cotton candy.
 
And that’s just the first of many abysmal musical numbers. As the movie wore on, it alternated between boring the hell out of me and assaulting my eyes and ears with a mix of bland and horrible song and dance.  There’s even a Thriller rip-off sequence with people dancing around dressed up as zombies. Note: this may sound entertaining, but don’t be fooled. It’s terrible.
 
The doll itself fails to be creepy. The director tries to make it frightening by zooming the camera in and out on the doll while music blares and lights flash. When it “attacks” someone, you’ll generally see the doll, then the camera will cut to the victim. It’s about as scary as getting heartburn and generates a similar level of enjoyment.

The movie tries to liven things up with an inept romance subplot and eventually even throws in some attempted rape and shoddy kung fu. There’s a lousy climatic showdown at the end, and by that point the only reason I cared was the hope that it signaled my time with Papi Gudia was coming to an end.

It took me two tries to get through this movie; only dogged determination and a lot of cursing at the people who made it carried me through on the second viewing. Papi Gudia is a miserable excuse for a film. The doll may do a poor job at representing evil incarnated as an inanimate object, but this DVD does just fine.

Watch and be dismayed. This is the best part of Papi Gudia!