Bhoot Bhooturey Samuddurey (Bengali) / Good intentions but …

Cast: Paran Bandopadhyay, Bhaswar Chatterjee, Manoj Mitra, Biplab Banerjee, Moushumi Saha, Shantilal Mukherjee, Joyjeet Banerjee,
Bhola Tamang, Sankar Debnath, Bijoy Mukherjee and introducing child actors Sayan Sarkar and Megha Deb

By Shoma A. Chatterji

Bhoot Bhooturey Samuddurey is an adaptation of a Prafulla Roy ghost story involving Tabul (Sayan Sarkar) and Tinni (Megha Deb), two kids who solve the murder of an innocent ‘ghost’ who approaches them for help through silent gestures. Tabul and Tinni visit Digha, a popular and picturesque beach resort, with their parents. They discover that Suite Number 116, occupied by one Lalkamal Joardar (Bhaswar Chatterjee) is vacant and taboo to other guests because Joardar has gone missing. Was he kidnapped? Or murdered? Or did he disappeared on his own? The two kids wander across the beaches and suddenly meet a handsome young man playing a flute.
They discover from a photograph that the hotel manager shows their father, that the man in the picture is none other than Joardar. A few more visits to a dilapidated mansion within a cluster of trees offers them glimpses of the flautist who leads them to a mound of sand near the beach. Though they solve the mystery of Joardar having been murdered, the questions ‘why’, ‘by who’ and ‘how’ continues to plague them. They approach the police who discover that the hurriedly built grave does not have a body. However, the mystery is finally solved. The culprits, headed by Joardar’s cousin Samir (Joyjeet Banerjee), have killed Joardar. It is revenge because their uncle (ManojMitra) willed his entire property to Joardar leaving Samir in the lurch. Joardar’s murder is avenged by the two kids and the police praise their efforts.
The target audience, for this film, is children. The director has introduced a team of ghosts who sing and dance and scare off people on the sands of Digha. They crop up every now and then with long strands of white hair that looks like cotton chords hanging whenever they sing and dance. But this disturbs and scares much more than it entertains. Their songs are designed to resemble the ghost kin’s song in Ray’s Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne but falls flat for terrible picturisation. A sense of aesthetics is conspicuous by its absence and this critic found the few members of the audience trickling towards the nearest exit much before the film came to an end. Moushumi Saha as the kid’s mother proudly showcases her ethnic collection of salwar-kameez while the goons and the chief villain are reduced by the screenplay to a gang of disastrous clowns that evokes neither humour nor fear.
There are too many songs and good actors like Biplab, Moushumi Saha and Bhaswar Chatterjee are wasted in badly-scripted characters. Deb plays Tinni, who has little beyond short skirts and skin-tight tee-shirts. Ghoshal has honed his skills in whodunits for television but Bhoot Bhooture Somuddurey (The Ghost and the Ghostly on the Beach) does not endorse his talent or experience.