'Tere Bin Laden' (Hindi, Satire, 2010)
Director: Abhishek Sharma
Cast: Ali Zafar, Pradhuman Singh, Sugandha Garg, Piyush Mishra
Talking about Osama bin Laden is like treading the minefield of political correctness.
Among the most notoriously influential men of our times, Osama is to controversy what peas are to carrots. All of what we have seen of him over the past decade is vitriolic videos that mysteriously reach certain news channels.
'Tere Bin Laden' takes this media phenomenon of the current age and uses it tickle your ribs. Better still, it is set in Pakistan, the piñata that occupies a corner of Indian hearts.
The film pokes fun at those who take themselves too seriously. It shows that humour doesn’t have to play slave to worldly troubles. It shows that any analysis or insight I might have given you at the beginning of this review can be laughed at and brushed aside. I could take that on my chin. How many Bollywood movies do you know that are set in Pakistan (no, 'Gandhi' doesn’t count; 'Veer Zara'- maybe)? Much less, how many Bollywood movies do you know that are set entirely in Pakistan and star a Pakistani star?
'Tere Bin Laden' is about Ali Hasan, a TV news reporter in Karachi, whose dream is to chase the American dream but does not have the money for it. When he finds a poultry farmer who closely resembles Osama, he comes up with a plan to make money out of it. So he gathers a rag-tag band to shoot an Osama video without the knowledge of the lookalike. The outtakes of this shoot are the heart of this movie’s humour, with our own Osama spewing curses in Punjabi. That scene alone make the film worth a repeat watch.
It features all that could possibly be funny about Pakistan, right from a Punjabi bumpkin and an ISI agent who stumbles, literally, onto the truth to an American Intelligence man who calls the shots and even a missile strike. With such a long list of politically explosive things, it is amazing how the film spins and pirouettes through to finish with a blemish-free ta-dah.
An unacquainted viewer may face a slight problem understanding the Urdu-influenced Hindi spoken in the movie. But this is not a physics classroom and you don’t have to understand everything you hear. To put it simply, Tere Bin Laden is an extremely funny movie.
You absolutely need to watch it for the sake of world peace.