Teen Thay Bhai

Cast: Om Puri,Shreyas Talpade,Deepak Dobriyal,Ragini Khant

Director: Mrigdeep Singh Lamba

Teen Thay Bhai is a film about three brothers, Chiksi Gill (Om Puri), who runs a business of undergarments, Happy Gill (Deepak Dobriyal), a quirky unskilled dentist and Fancy Gill (Shreyas Talpade), a struggling actor in Punjabi Films. All three of them hate each other and can't stand each other at all but are forced to spend one whole day each year in a dilapidated mansion size house somewhere in the Himalayas for three consecutive years in order to fulfill a clause and claim the property bequeathed by their grandfather. In an extremely predictable fashion how the three come together is what follows through a series of unhumored, banal buffoonery that proceeds at an excruciatingly slow pace. Directed by Mrigdeep Singh Lamba, Teen Thay Bhai doesn't even meet the slapstick standards as it fails to even conjure a chuckle or two. The filmmaker tries his hands at every type of comedy right from toilet jokes to black humor but all fail in making viewers laugh.

The film not only has a very wafer thin plot but also suffers with bad screenplay. It oscillates between monotony and boredom throughout. Though the film does have some endearing moments especially the flashback of Happy Gill where he falls in love with a Punjabi kudi Gurleen Kaur (Ragini Khanna), it gets overshadowed by the tediously long and irritatingly loud act of the others. There's excessive melodrama throughout the flashback portion of the film specially the drama by Yograj Singh who plays the grandfather. The first half still remains tolerable as the film takes a meaningless tangential turn in the second half in a bid to increase the comedy quotient but ends up only frustrating the viewer further. What the audience takes away at the end of the film is the traumatic experience of viewing extremely close and unpleasant shots of Om Puri's face; the excessively loud dialogues mouthed by him, the long hammy monologues of Deepak and Shreyas and last but not the least a bad story.

Music by Sukhwinder Singh and Ranjit Barot is average at best. There is no innovation in the cinematography. The otherwise talented cast Om Puri, Shreyas Talpade and Deepak Dobriyal ham throughout the film courtesy bad screenplay and script. '3 Thay Bhai' is the kind of film for which the makers may claim after a year that it failed because 'it was way ahead of it's times'. That it tried to follow European cinema. That it had a bit of Russian folk element and setting, especially due to all around snow peaked mountains and 'Chook' and 'Gake' kind of characters. Yup, I remember reading about such characters in those cute looking books around centred on Russian folk fare but '3 Thay Bhai' is far from coming anywhere close. On the contrary the film ends up being a boring and frustrating piece of cinema that makes those two hours seem much longer, especially in the dying moments (literally so) when it goes on and on with a celebration song thrown in even before the end credit title roll begins.

The film is (obviously) about three brothers who can't see eye to eye and have a bone to settle. This is owing to some misunderstanding owing to their troubled childhood. The trouble though is that these misunderstandings too are so childish that it makes one think why couldn't the three of them have just come together on a session of drinks (considering the fact that all of them are so fond of liquor, as shown in the film) and resolved all their differences. Nevertheless, the writers and the director here seem to have grown up on Tom & Jerry and they have ended up making an entire film that is based on similar humour though being utterly charm-less. Also, to bring in certain elements that could have appealed to the adults, there is this entire meaningless episode dedicated to the gypsy women who are cooking 'paranthas' at the top of the hill followed by the one involving a cop who has his own unique (but hardly funny) way of giving third degree torture.

I mean if a broken door, falling roof, misplaced ashes, a dead dog, dysfunctional fireplace, burnt underwear, a bottle of whiskey, damaged fuse, lot of snow and an intruder could make three brothers go so mad with each other then well, they didn't deserve to be together after all. It indeed is extremely unbelievable to see three grown up accidentally tripping over other and shouting as if a bullet went through their hearts. Come on, even cartoon channels have started showing projecting better humour on screen these days, what with 'Doraemon' fast replacing 'Tom & Jerry'. In a setup like this, one would have expected the actors to be all charged up. But then it seems that they too realised that it was an exercise in futility and hence seem to have given up. Om Puri aims at being angry for the entire duration in the film but after a while even his jokes dry up. Shreyas isn't his 100% self and is surprisingly patchy. Deepak too is a far cry from his 'Tanu Weds Manu' days and his subdued act seems laboured. Yograj Singh as 'dadaji' is a poor version of Puneet Issar while Ragini Khanna overacts in a manner similar to that of Divya Dutta.

Yes, an occasional banana peel humour does invoke a smirk or perhaps an occasional laugh but that happens only for a moment, for a dialogue, for a split second situation but never for an entire scene. This means that despite having actors such as Om Puri, Shreyas Talpade and Deepak Dobriyal on board, all you end up with is an expression of boredom on your face right through the film's narrative with a climax that is not just long drawn but also clichéd, predictable and a trigger for the question that pops up in your mind 'So, what's the big deal?' Some comedies mean well. But they lose their way in their noble intentions. “Teen Thay Bhai” seems like a terrific idea for a comedy. Three brothers separated more at mirth than by birth, trying hard to keep the spirit alive. They fail miserably, not for the want of trying.

The script here depends too much on extraneous trappings, too little on integral assets. There’s no scarcity of acting talent here. Shreyas Talpade, Deepak Dobriyal and Om Puri shine in that order Alas, they have no meat to sink their sharp teeth in. Often we see the actor groping and grappling with material that doesn’t give them a chance to move beyond the immediate laughter of a situational comedy. Beyond the sound of current laughter there’s no hereafter in the humour. The static snowcapped location doesn’t help either. The three principal actors seem as frozen in their efforts to rise above the stagnant humour as the snowy landscape in Jammu where veteran cinematographer Ashok Mehta tries desperately to find a centre in the meandering mirth. The script has the seeds of an engaging satire. But the story never takes off. Minimalist props and background music don’t help drive away the feeling of growing boredom that clutches at the throat of this vapid tale of three brothers who could kill each other with sibling friction and kill us with sheer boredom.

Towards the end, the plot shifts out a snow-strapped cottage into the outdoors where the brothers are assailed by hippy women who feed them with parathas filled with marijuana. By this time the script has completely run out of tricks to hold our attention. A climax with a giant steamroller as the villain is just about all that we are left looking at. “Teen Thay Bhai” is like one of those books whose backflap synopsis offers us tempting insights into human nature. But by the time we settle down to the experience the plot has betrayed its own interests.