Naughty @ 40 Movie Review: Govinda's Mid Life Disaster!

It is a bit tragic, the path that Govinda's career has taken over the past decade. Having spent over two and a half decades in the film industry, the doldrums that he finds his fortunes in today are quite saddening, given that there was a time not so long ago, when no less than Amitabh Bachchan himself had to piggyback on Govinda's box office talents to score a hit, with 'Bade Miyan, Chhote Miyan.

While his contemporaries, like Anil Kapoor, Sanjay Dutt and Sunny Deol are still flourishing, it seems as though he has turned into a box office pariah, stuck in a time warp he can't get out of. And his latest release, Jag Mundhra's Naughty @ 40, seems to symptomatic of everything that is wrong with Govinda's career.

Govinda plays Happy, the middle aged son of a successful London based entrepreneur. In a plot that borrows quite heavily from the Steve Carrell starrer The 40 Year Old Virgin, Happy, predictably, is the chaste protagonist of this affair. When his Casanova cousins and business manager cannot find a way to get him laid in London, his parents take him back to India, to get him married to the proverbial gaon ki gori.

Sadly enough, for Happy, the girl turns out to be mentally challenged; at least she conducts herself like that, forcing Happy to stray with a lingerie model he happens to meet. It certainly requires a certain suspension of disbelief that Happy goes from being an untouched virgin to a glad eyed married man, while his wife goes from being a quasi 5 year old to a mature spouse, all in a matter of minutes. Of course, everything resolves itself tidily at the end, with Happy and his wife reuniting in 'emotional' scenes, by the hillsides of Manali, where the second half of the film is shot.

It is surreal to see Govinda still try to pass off his tongue twisting dialogues, lines like samajh samajh ke samajh ko samajho, as comedy. Where it was novel in '95's Coolie No.1 and passable in '99's Aunty No.1, it seems truly terrible that in 2011, the actor is still stuck on those same old gag lines, of which there are plenty here. With gay jokes galore and some truly terrible comic set pieces, Naughty @ 40 is more boring than funny.

Yuvika Chaudhary seems to have a knack for playing the sort of irritating role she plays here as Govinda's wife Gauri, while Lucia Edwards, as the model who guides Happy in the sexual arts is okay. The others, like Anupam Kher, Shakti Kapoor, Smita Jayakar and Harish, can be safely ignored.

Monty Sharma and Shamir Tandon's music is nothing noteworthy and Kabir Lal's cinematography is quite pedestrian. One has to wonder, with nothing working for this one, what Jagmohan Mundhra was directing all this while.

If the film had tried harder, it could have ended up in the 'it's so bad it's good' category, especially with the Kanti Shah type narration that opens up the film. Unfortunately, Naughty @ 40 doesn't even manage that. Avoid this one like the plague.