A crime is committed with a farmhouse and a 300-acre property at the centre. Presiding over it is Nani Padmini Raj Singh (Madhuri Bhatia wearing makeup, dazzling diamond choker, dangling long earrings and glittering bracelet in bed because that’s what rich old dowagers wear).
The scene shifts to migrant worker Harry (Amol Parashar) walking home during the pandemic while dad Jai Prakash or JP (Sanjay Mishra) holds forth in a truck like he’s got verbal diarrhoea.
You’d think the premise has been set for a gripping tale that combines the crime with migrant workers.
Or that there’ll be a winning mix of comedy and crime.
But a plot written by Subhash Ghai brings Harry and daddy to 36 Farmhouse for something so farcical that it’s truly unremarkable.
Total stranger JP is picked up by housekeeper Benny (Ashwini Kalsekar in a dress because that’s what girls called Benny wear) and brought to 36 Farmhouse as the new cook while his family thinks he’s gone missing. Why Benny insists that JP should be a man with no family remains unexplained. Or why JP couldn’t have made one phone call to his family to say he’s fine would be logical.
But logic is precisely what goes missing in this amateurish attempt at filmmaking by director Ram Ramesh Sharma. And the plot flatlines.
Raunak Singh (Vijay Raaz in a silk nightgown because that’s what rich men wear) has an assistant trailing him, Benny and JP strike up a friendship that includes thieving, and Harry lands there with Nani’s granddaughter Antra (Barkha Singh), a dress designer. For reasons unknown, Harry and daddy keep quibbling and the local police keep bumbling and sniffing at the farmhouse they call a crime scene.
Antra takes a fancy to migrant walker Harry who’s actually a designer darzi, Raunak Singh treats Harry like a domestic, and Nani entertains Harry who sits at her feet to dispense advice.
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Sharma unnecessarily picturises an entire song on Sanjay Mishra and listless numbers on Antra-Harry while people in cars and on the road move around without masks at the height of the pandemic. But we’re so savvy, we have a birthday party for Nani on a zoom call. And the crime is solved, Nani knows what to do with her money.
But nobody knows that jewellery’s missing too because Benny and JP believe that ‘Zaroorat ki chori’ is kosher unlike ‘lalach ki chori’. (Some steal for need, others steal for greed.) Laugh, you’ve just been hit on the head with comedy and reality.
Watch 36 Farmhouse Trailer: