The Pinkvilla Movie Review - Tere Bin Laden Dead or Alive

Tere Bin Laden Dead or Alive gives stupidity a new meaning. It is terrible. The light-hearted comedy that claims to be a satire is devoid of any IQ. Director Abhishek Sharma, who was last in charge of the forgettable Akshay Kumar starrer The Shaukeens has simply proved that the prequel of this film was a mere fluke. Tere Bin Laden was novel and sincere, with an intelligent story to go with it. TBL2 is a compilation of Twitter jokes that had the good fortune of being converted into a film. Oh Jeez! This one will be bad, so brace yourself up. 

Jalebi-wala Sharma heir (Manish Paul) inherits his father's business. He had always aspired to be a filmmaker and once he flees home to pursue a career in the movies, he hits gold when he makes a film on the escapades with Osama's look-alike. Yes, we are talking about Tere Bin Laden. Quite early on, you get the drift that the filmmaker is busy gloating about his past success (singular, to be noted!). Almost 20 minutes of the film is wasted in paying homage to the Ali Zafar starrer. And Mr Zafar returns to play a womanizer and a troublesome, snooty actor (in the film) who is busy dancing away to a song called Six Pack abs(talk about vanity *shame*). The film then shifts between American intelligence and terrorist organizations’ need to find Osama or someone who looks like him. A comedy of errors begin and there is absolutely no thrill in this no brainer.

Jokes repeat themselves frequently till they bore you to death and Manish's comic timing is best reserved for television. He is never an actor and his character seems to have walked out from the sets of Mickey Virus. Imagine, we are talking about a film in which Sikander Kher is the best thing. Could it get any worse? *Chandler Bing tone*

Logic is the last thing on their minds. Apparently an actor and a director sign a film in their first meeting without a contract or a script. Producers are equally gullible, as their pug has better expressions than them. There is a map with a place called 'Somewhere in Somewhere' and a bunch of five 'apparently' literate people who can't see what is coming. Dear director, pick up a dictionary and find out the meaning of a satire. Dumb is funny for adolescents and be content if that is your target audience.

Your heart will go out to Piyush Mishra who tries to induce some genuine fun in this childish story but with a script or a lack of it, he can hardly manage better. Death is belittled and grave international issues are condensed into funny lines. Before we are accused of not being in sync with a funny side, may we defend saying that our definition is thankfully nowhere close to what the makers of this film understand it as.

As for laughs, there are a few where you laugh at things and not with the story. The best thing, however, was Olympia-e-dehshat where terrorists battle it out to win a suicide jacket signed by Osama Bin Laden himself. That was the only time the movie had us in splits. 

Toh aiyye badhte hain aaj ki sansani khez khabar - Yeh movie toh bohot buri hai bhai! It is poorly researched, has no political context of the issue it talks about and worse it is so unfunny and repetitive, that beyond a point, it gets irritating. Bad writing hit its lowest low today. It is by no means the worst film we've watched but funny is serious business and this movie makes a mockery of it. 

As we sign off with this write-up, let's warn the makers to keep up their guards. Osama's spirit will come to haunt you for this. We wish it were ROFL but it was plain STFU, if you know what we mean. 

We rate it a 40% on the Pinkvilla Movie Meter.