Bank Chor movie review LIVE: Zero parts funny, but saved by Riteish Deshmukh, Sahil Vaid's acts

Y Film’s new movie Bank Chor, starring Riteish Deshmukh, Vivek Oberoi and Rhea Chakraborty, starts off as a typical heist caper. Riteish’s character (Champak) and his two sidekicks (the imaginatively named Genda and Gulab) hijack a bank, holding all the employees and customers in the branch hostage. [caption id=“attachment_3671683” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  Poster of Bank Chor. Image via Twitter[/caption] Right off, we’re told that unlike your usual money-minded thief, Champak is doing this to get the necessary capital for his father’s bypass surgery. His would-be nemesis is CBI officer Amjad Khan (Vivek Oberoi), on the scene to foil the robbery, while Gayatri (Rhea Chakraborty) is a news reporter presenting live updates from the scene. Champak and his sidekicks have never robbed a bank ever before. So under the name of being innocent, they get to play dumb, which isn’t all that funny. Their attempts at humour quickly turn annoying as there’s a joke in nearly every sentence spoken, several of which fail to land. Seriously, 30 minutes in the film, and I was hard-pressed to find one joke that made me laugh out loud. I will say this though — Bank Chor is markedly different from the sex comedies that Riteish and Vivek have been known for, of late. However, while the genre is different this time, the tactic of trying to induce comedy with loud expressions, stupid gestures and random dialogue has not changed. There’s also Baba Sehgal — as Baba Sehgal — in this movie. I don’t know why he is in there, and the director (Bumpy) doesn’t seem to know it either. Every joke in this film comes from people acting stupidly and irrational. The sad part is that none of this works. The entire theatre seems to be in agreement with me as I haven’t head so much as a guffaw yet. By the end of the first half, it’s clear that while the production house managed to come up with extremely innovative marketing campaigns, that involved an honest review of their on trailer, a ‘roast’ of Riteish etc, there’s nothing innovative about the content. With an all-too-predictable twist that happens right before the intermission, I hold zero expectations for the second half. While the first half was wannabe-funny (but not), the second half is wannabe-psychotic dark. Riteish Deshmukh performs well but the writing is too cold for his performance to be lifted to a higher level. Vivek Oberoi impresses as the stern and stubborn CBI officer with not more than one straight expression throughout the entire movie. And Rhea Chakraborty’s role unfortunately is too inconsequential to even mention. One actor who does put his best foot forward is Sahil Vaid, who plays an unexpectedly twisted character. (We’re revealing nothing further about his role!) Twist over twist over another twist, Bank Chor is zero parts funny, no parts witty but is made interesting only because of the performances by Riteish Deshmukh and Sahil Vaid.