GUEST IIN LONDON - An unrequired, unofficial remake with an emotionally moving climax that should have been a part of a better film. (Review By Bobby Sing)

A director remaking his own film after a few years has quite a few examples in Hindi Cinema with the most famous being Mehboob Khan remaking his AURAT (1940) as MOTHER INDIA (1947). These are the instances wherein either the director wished to convey something powerful, readdressing it in a more important and refined remake or he intended to repeat the earlier success of a film after a decade or so just to have another hit in his name.

However GUEST IIN LONDON neither falls in the first category nor the second as it doesn’t have anything significant to convey in its theme and also wasn’t any big success in its earlier version released in 2010 titled ATITHI TUM KAB JAOGE. Besides the unique point of this unrequired, less impactful and unofficial remake of his own film by director Ashwin Dhir remains that it features the same lead actor Paresh Rawal playing an exactly similar role along with Ajay Devgn in a cameo, who both were also there in the original film quite surprisingly.

In other words, I have no idea how on earth Ashwin managed to convince his producers as well the (reputed) actors to say ‘yes’ for an almost similar but much inferior script full of unexpectedly ridiculous progression and pathetic sequences.

Where ATKJ was a sincere and fairly watchable film based on Late Sharad Joshi’s short story, also reminding you of Satyajit Ray’s masterpiece AGANTUK (Stranger) featuring Utpal Dutt as the unwanted ‘visitor’ in the house, the present GUEST IIN LONDON is a badly written film that is more interested in toilet humor and fart jokes instead of its basic theme. To give you a better idea, apart from all flat forced humour it also has a few minutes long song/ghazal recited on various kinds of farts in a particular sequence. Plus it presents Pakistani citizens abroad in such a bad light as if the writer and director were having their own vendetta plans for the same.

Failing in its almost every major department including direction, writing and music, the only positive feature of the film is its climax ending the trauma at a serious note recalling the 9/11 disaster in New York (almost entirely shot on chroma, instead of real location shoot that gets easily caught). Ajay Devgn enters in these final moments making an avoidable cameo and I really wish the concluding emotional moments had been a part of another better movie.