In what could be considered  a significant step up in her career,  Sobhita Dhulipala( so watchable in the  webseries Made In Heaven) gets to play the  title role. Yipee! Yes, she  is  the eponymous Body, and  well qualified  to play the role. And among all the heroines that Emraan Hashmi has kissed on screen, this one has  the most  eligible lips. In fact  Ms  Dhulipala’s lips have a life of their own,  quite independent of the rest of her. She  plays  a very spoilt heiress,  the kind who thinks she has a great sense  of humour and no one corrects her because of her. So at her wedding mandap she turns to her  husband-in-waiting  Emraan Hashmi and says  with a poker face that she doesn’t want to marry him as she knows he wants to marry her for her wealth.

While Hashmi (the  only actor  in  this  film who  takes his role seriously) chokes over the  joke (what else  can he  do?) the presiding  pundit looks like he could do with a peg. Or maybe just jump into the  havan fire. In dire need   of a  peg  is this  unhinged story of  a Body that disappears  from the morgue. Well, whose laash is it anyway? The  entire proceedings  of this puerile  joke  of  a plot, with  twists and turns that  would  boggle  even the most  probing mind,  unravel in a morgue/police station where  Rishi Kapoor is  the cop in duty  who, we are  told, takes  his  cases  personally. Whatever that  means.

To get Hashmi to confess to his wife’s murder, Rishi  looks as gruff and talks in  the language that he uses in  real life. For all practical purposes, Rishi Kapoor is playing Rishi Kapoor, impatient  arrogant and sarcastic and rude. Somewhere we are  told he is grieving for  his dead wife Nancy (I remember her name  because she  is the only character who  does the  right thing  in this  plot: dies before the film begins). If you  have seen the same Spanish director  Oriol Paulo’s desi adaptations of The  Invisible Guest (Evaru in  Telugu and Badlaa in Hindi) you  would know that a ghastly road accident  is at the core of  the conflict.

Unlike the  previous Paulo  remakes in Telugu and Hindi,  The Body never reaches the  realm of  credibility.  It is constantly in a state  of etherized  numbness with a dead woman walking, and  the  other two protagonists just talking talking talking  without  making much sense to themselves, let alone the audience.

By the time the  mystery is solved we are way beyond caring, our minds numbed by the volley of  the dumb. And if you care, the solution offered is so ridiculous as  to make you you’re you faith in the power  of  the whodunit to  shock.

Without a doubt The Body is  the  worst  film of  Rishi Kapoor’s career. And I include such classics  of fetid kitsch from his career as Rangeela Ratan, Naya Daur, Aan Aur Shaan,Naseeb Apna Apna and Sheshnag.S erving as an impertinent and  unwanted  counterpart  to the  recent Knives  Out,  The Body is  simply  one of the most  asinine whodunits I have ever seen.