No High in this one

Nonika Singh

What’s in a name... well, well when a film title tweaks and twists the word hijack you expect it to be both funny and intelligent. Alas, High Jack not only hijacks your common sense but even takes your sense of humour for a ride. 

Holding you ransom, it allows no breather whatsoever. It’s not the passengers on the flight who are at risk but you are held captive and we are certainly not saying it by way of a compliment.

As plots go, this one not only loses it far too soon, but doesn’t have much exciting wherewithal at its disposal in the first place. A plane is hijacked by a bunch of good fellas whose motives are as ‘noble’ as their bumbling tactics pedestrian. To generate more mirth it throws in a pack of passengers too. For a start there is Sumeet Vyas, a struggling DJ Rakesh, who gets high on drugs and ends up intoxicating the rest too. 

Vyas, who delighted us in the web series Permanent Roommates, looks more weary than high. We so wish this wasn’t his debut film in Bollywood. Then there is a middle- aged couple Mr and Mrs Taneja who have eyes and hands on younger women and men respectively. Funny? We thought it was tragic that a fine actor like Kumud Mishra is simply wasted in telling and retelling some stale jokes. As he laughs out loud clearly he is the only one laughing. 

It’s not just laughter that is forced; so are the absurd situations. Disgruntled airline employees and their plight, of course, is taken from a real life incident. But here as reality meets farce the end result is to put it in one word; ennui. As one actor says, ‘tumhare character ka koi graph nahi hai kya’. Hello, the director writer forgot the right plotting too. One of the very few funny dialogues in the film comes all too late. As the ‘worse half’ (writer’s words not ours) Mrs Taneja of the couple suddenly bursts into a bhajan to offer solace to fellow fliers, a passenger quips, ‘oh this is part of torture technique’.  Only if the film had more such wisecracks, we would have been less tortured!  

Indeed, the film tries hard to tickle you and ends up dulling your senses. And this one is a pain even if you were to watch it on a high. Singularly unfunny and partially pretentious using words like sexist to drive home its intelligence quotient, it is low on most counts most notably on fun and frolic. Even at the risk of sounding unpatriotic, we suggest you head for the more touted Hollywood outing or better still catch up with Raazi if you haven’t by now. Even at a short 102 minutes this one is a drag. Forget the pun in the title, simply refuse to be ‘hijacked’. For there is a serious danger of being robbed of not just your ticket money but your funny bone too.

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