One expects quality cinema from a guy who is a former film critic and who has a strong production backing, but after sitting through this piece of junk, I want to revisit the idea that film critics make good filmmakers.

Poking fun at popular international brands, ideologies, and stereotypes is what the film relies heavily on for humor from the beginning. That a fictitious country called Bangistan is torn between communal tension is a good base to make a satire. But the wagon which was supposed to hit the star looks like it has punctured all its tires, burst all its windows and windshield, and has swerved off road into a known yet unpleasant territory that is best described as moronic and highfalutin. Known, because this territory is already crowded with the Bollywood likes (Roy (2015), et al). Unpleasant, because, well, you know.

Two over-smart and over-sympathetic characters (Samrat & Deshmukh) are sent by their respective community leaders to Poland (for heck's sake) of Hindi speaking yet Polish lipping inhabitants to carry out a suicide bombing mission in an attempt to instigate international terror thereby disrupting harmony. Dialogs have been stolen from classic films, and if you were to subtract the steal from the total dialogs in the film, you will have a non-operational womb in your hand.

The biggest problem with the film is that its comedy is all single- layered, meaning a joke is introduced and is taken forward until it transforms into farce (and travesty) and into hogwash and then finally spirals into an abyss of dark nothingness. Editing and direction are in gutters, and so is the pretentious screenplay.

Basically, the whole film is Mr Anshuman's imagination, and when one imagines things, success is always a presumed by-product. Unfortunately, nothing works in reality; not even those indigenously made explosives that they use in the film. The songs ignite trepidation in its viewers and the music man is growling his way to get noticed. We get it, Mr Sampat, you can scream.

There is not an iota of sense in the film which could grip the audience, forget about hooking them. There is no insight into the actual theme of the film and with that sermon at the end, all goes downhill. The protagonists or the antagonists or the anti-heroes (it's all messed up) suddenly stop and introspect about their foolish actions and then we have a genre shift in the film, which is more unbearable than what preceded.

While Deshmukh looks confused, Samrat is the epitome of overacting. I checked my phone for three seconds and my neighbor notified me that I had missed Miss Fernandez. I was happier.

The plot holes are in millions, plus during a fight scene towards the end, all limits are crossed and one realizes that these two hours will never come back. The background score tries hard like a mother tries hard to teach her son to carve out a perfect cursive letter "f," but the result is a garbled product which looks like a pile of crap. And the whole drama ends with tears. Trust me, there will be tears. River of tears in the situation room of Excel Entertainment. For cryin' out loud, the expectations were higher because of Akhtar and Sidhwani on board, however the man at the wheels goes super retard.

When a rookie filmmaker uses Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro" to weigh in the magnitude of a scene, one ought to know that there is nothing much to consider in the film. In the case of Bangistan, why don't you skip the word "much" from the previous statement? Ironically, to imagine that if the director was to again don the cap of a film critic one last time and review his own movie, the river of tears that I was talking about would turn into an ocean, all thanks to Mr Anshuman.

BOTTOM LINE: Bangistan can be best described in three Us - unimaginative, unfunny, and ugly.

VERDICT: No stars. Skip for life.

Can be watched with a typical Indian family? YES