The Saif Ali Khan–Arjun Kapoor comedy horror film, ‘Bhoot Police‘ dropped on Disney+ Hotstar at 12 am today – and it was a decent one time watch. The film definitely has its ups and downs – decent premise and Said Ali Khan is quite funny while the direction and final screenplay ruined the whole feature. However, Disney+ Hotstar managed to make their presence known as well (why we do not know) – through their horrendous subtitling.
Subtitling has been an issue among OTTs that stream Indian content for some time now. From what we understand, most films usually have a subtitler who works with the scriptwriter to gives us an accurate (or as close to accurate as can be) translation. However, when the film is handed over for streaming to big OTT platforms like Disney+ Hotstar, Netflix or Amazon Prime Video – their QR team decides to make changes to the translation in the name of “quality”. And then they give us a much inferior translation.
However, ‘Bhoot Police’ seems to have undergone something even worse. Upon watching the film, one can easily understand, the film was quickly made, edited and directed – to be released as soon as possible. Everything is rushed – in this case, including the subtitling. Many jokes, which to our surprise are good, don’t land onscreen, because of poor translation. Several dialogues lose their weight as well due to bad subtitling.
If you have a minimum understanding of Hindi, then we would suggest that you watch ‘Bhoot Police’ without the subtitles. The film isn’t brilliant – but it is still a decent one-time watch. You can check it out on Disney+ Hotstar.