'Hindu Muslim Bhai Bhai'. Can this hoary slogan, coined in the early years of the republic. be repeated minus irony? The only way the idea can be incorporated in the movies these days is to either spoof it up, or to embed it in a satire. 'Bangistan' does that. Or, let's say, tries to do that, but doesn't really take it too far.

When a former film critic sets out to make his first film, he is expected to, among other things, weave an intriguing theme around the plot. Bangistan, director Karan Anshuman's debut film, delivers on this front very ably: It is about two forever-quarelling neighbouring countries, South and North Bangistan! Why this 'intriguing' name? Because the two protagonists become suicide bombers later in the film. But that doesn't justify the title, right?

The basic premise of Bangistan is interesting in itself. This quirky comedy tells you the simple story of two naive men, willing to go to any length for their respective faiths. Action kick-starts in North and South Bangistan, a fictitious but beauteous land where opposing faiths, the Muslims and the Hindus, have their headquarters.

Bollywood has seen many films that were based on the theme of terrorism. Be it A WEDNESDAY!, BLACK FRIDAY, MISSION KASHMIR, FIZA...to name a few, Bollywood has 'been there, seen that'. However, there have been a few satirical comedies made in Bollywood on this subject that includes successful films like TERE BIN LADEN and FILMISTAAN. This week's release BANGISTAN is again a satirical take on terrorism. Will it hit the Box-Office 'Bang-on' or will it completely miss its target

A couple of months back, Welcome To Karachi had tried to extract humour out of a sensitive issue like terrorism and had fallen flat on its face. That in itself should have been a hint for other filmmakers, but yet, Excel Entertainment decided to go ahead with Bangistan, an absurd tale about Hindu-Muslim relations and suicide bombings.

Zaniness is tricky path to tread on in movies. Done right, it delivers copious amount of laughs. Mess it up, one is bored and disgruntled. Bangistan falls in the latter category. The worst possible scenario for a comedy is one that doesn't tickle the funny bone. One struggles to find real humorous moments in Karan Anshuman's directorial debut which is rather ambitious as it looks to both amuse and preach like Rajkumar Hirani's PK did more recently.

When you see a film like Bangistan, it's hard to believe that it's been made in 2015. Film critic turned director Karan Anshuman's debut offering on the big screen seems to boast of all traits and tropes that Bollywood realised it was not proud of and therefore corrected over the past decade. Then we see the film's production banner Excel Entertainment, and at the end of two hours we are left wondering what could have prompted Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani to fund something that starts off as a satire and then somewhere along the way seems to suffer from an existential crisis and ends up being exactly what it was trying to make fun of.

And did Excel Entertainment understand that the film turned preachy towards the end, although, I would like to believe that it was not the intention. But then when you have too much running into your mind [with no clarity of thought at the table] before executing the first shot, films like BANGISTAN do happen.

You know a political satire is a colossal failure if you can't tell who the joke is really on. The only funny gag in film critic-turned-filmmaker Karan Anshuman's debut feature Bangistan appears towards the end. Two people cosplaying as stormtroopers make a fleeting appearance at a religious conference in Krakow, Poland, where the heads of religious faiths from all around the world have assembled to witness a Shankaracharya and Imam broker peace between warring neighbours -- the fictional lands of South and North Bangistan.

The movie is set in a fictional island nation called Bangistan (don't ask why!), which is divided into two parts. The North Bangistan is inhabited by Muslims, while the South by Hindus. Their chief leaders are friends and want to openly show their solidarity at World Religious Conference (or something like that...), that's being held in Poland. The extremist groups on each side don't like the idea so they convince two gullible youths to bomb the conference.

'Bangistan' is aptly titled, in the sense that it induces desires to bang your head against a wall/ steel plate/ any available hard surface multiple times while watching it. Alternately, its sheer inanity & bad acting (Pulkit Samrat shines in this space) numbs your mind. Multiple times while it played out, you wonder how a banner like Excel Entertainment, led by Ritesh Sidhwani & Farhan Akhtar, ever greenlit a project so shoddy.

Debutant director Karan Anshuman's 'Bangistan' has a mighty interesting concept with a good intention (screenplay by Puneet Krishnan, Sumit Purohit and Karan Anshuman). It should have translated into a film to remember, but unfortunately it doesn't. However, there are some flashes of brilliance, which are unmissable.

True to its title, Bangistan makes more than its share of noise. But this mildly wacky satire on the futility of religious bigotry does not make too much sense. The central premise of the film is so overly pea-brained that the comedy that it delivers is 'explosive' only in that it manages to reduce any genuine prospects of humour to smithereens.

Early in Karan Anshuman's debut, Bangistan, a Bangladeshi cab driver in Poland named Tamim Hussain (Chandan Roy Sanyal) meets the film's two leads, Hafiz Bin Ali (Riteish Deshmukh) and Praveen Chaturvedi (Pulkit Samrat). Hafiz is interested in knowing whether he's a Muslim. Tamim says he doesn't have a religion. "Citizen Hussain," he says.