'Alone' - comedy of the week (IANS Movie Review, Rating **)

Film: "Alone"; Cast: Bipasha Basu and Karan Singh Grover; Director: Bhushan Patel;

Rating: **

They fooled us, didn't they? The two semi-clothed bodies writhing and moaning in the scenic water of Kerala made us believe this is an erotic thriller.

"Alone" is actually a very funny film. A kind of inside joke where the characters pretend to be trembling with terror and apprehension. But here's the secret -- they are actually shaking with laughter.

First off, "Alone" is a remake of a Thai film. That perhaps explains why there is much of Bipasha's 'thighs', plus other body parts, in the film. And for all of Bipasha's fans, there is good news. There are two of her to savour. Tragically, one of the twins is a ghost (a dead giveaway, if ever there was one), who doesn't quite care for her sister's lust interest.

Mr. Lust Interest is played by the film's in-house beefcake Karan Singh Grover. Mr. Grover, god bless his pumped up muscles, is so stiff in all the wrong places that he makes the furniture in a dentist's waiting room look like designer furniture in a five-star lounge.

A lot of the playing time of this atrocious scare-farce goes into Mr. Grover entwining his limbs into his leading lady's 'thigh-land'. We thought such muscular miracles only happened in the circus. How wrong we were! Come to think of it, we thought this was an erotic thriller. It turns out to an idiotic thriller, the thrill element provided more by the gosht (meat) than the ghost factor.

"Alone" moves at its own weird volition. The narrative slackens to a slumber and then suddenly wakes up with a start. The plot is a gravity-defying triangle about a woman, man and a ghost, who is no 'dost'.

The frights could have flowed fast and furious. Instead, what flows is a fatuous plot about two girls who get caught in a squabble over a wooden toyboy.

Bipasha tries hard to infuse life into the inert plot. She fails, though we can't blame her. Even the stunning Kerala locales look listless when weighed against the cartoonish terror and lust of a pair which knows they are getting into the wrong train.

Forget horror. This is a comedy.