Chatur Singh Two Star Movie Review: Missing It? Very 'Chatur'!

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The first thing you think when you stagger out of the movie hall is 'How could Sanjay Dutt do this?' The actor who gave fine intense performances as 'Raghu' in Vaastav and ticked the proverbial funny bone as 'Munna' in the 'Munnabhai' series has definitely undone everything he has achieved so far with his dubiously comic caper Chatur Singh Two Star.

Dutt plays a bumbling cop named Chatur Singh (complete with a bad wig and an overhanging paunch) who seems suspicious of everything including his daily milkman. Dutt and his equally idiotic sidekick Pappu (Suresh Menon) merrily go about making a nuisance of themselves. Their long suffering commissioner Sinha (Anupam Kher) sends Chatur on a mission to protect a corrupt minister Y.Y. Singh (Gulshan Grover) who gets himself admitted in hospital to avoid being arrested for some scam.

Meanwhile, Singh's bimbo secretary and PR advisor Sonia (Ameesha Patel) is blackmailed by a shady gang to lure Grover with an 'item song' to the window of the hospital room where he is shot by a sniper. A devastated Sonia who claims she was unaware of the murder plot is also whisked away to South Africa by the bad guys who bank on Chatur's idiocy for facilitating the escape so that Sonia can help recover a cache of diamonds that the minister had hid using the help of a don Gullu Gulfaam.

Chatur gets blamed for Sonia's escape and he begs for another chance to redeem himself by apprehending Sonia which the slain minister's wife (Rati Agnihotri) agrees to and a harried commissioner Sinha gives the go-ahead. Landing in South Africa, Chatur continues to make a fool of himself and for some reason, starts hanging out with a lisping taxi driver (Sanjay Mishra) who seems to be the only cabbie in the entire country as whenever any character needs a cab, our boy Mishra pops up conveniently.

Another gent who keeps running into the dimwit Chatur is a nameless insane man (Satish Kaushik) who Chatur tries to get rid of without much apparent success.

After sporting ridiculous clothes aimed at disguising himself and pretending to be a detective from Italy named James Armani, Sanjay Dutt teams up with Sonia to hunt for the diamonds and runs into another don with some unpronounceable name (Shakti Kapoor).

The don informs our hero that the diamonds are with Gulfaam who has lost his memory after an incident and Chatur discovers that Gulfaam is none other than the insane man who kept running into him. Meanwhile, commissioner Sinha too joins the fray and pretending to be a doctor at the suggestion of Chatur, advises the goons to bash up Gulfaam on the head repeatedly till he regains his memory.

The head bashing seems to work and Gulfaam gets his memory back. The diamonds are hid somewhere in a jungle park and for some idiotic reason, all the characters (including the taxi driver!) dress up as animals and fool around chasing each other for the packet of diamonds.

In the end it is revealed that Y.Y. Singh's wife was the main culprit who got her husband killed and orchestrated the entire escapade to acquire the diamonds. Handcuffs are slapped on her wrists and a grateful Sonia hugs Chatur, who get promoted (Let's hope the makers don't plan a sequel named 'Chatur Singh Three Star!)

As far as performances go, the entire team is consistent in the sense that everyone hams like there's no tomorrow (with the possible exception of Murli Sharma who plays the sniper, one of the bad guys).

Sanjay Dutt's bad hair job, paunch and dressing style remind one of those B-Grade movies the tickets of which are bought only by amorous couples looking for three hours of sexciting intimacy. The script, screenplay, dialogues and the music of the movie seem to compete with each other to achieve a pathetic low.

The director also tries to include a couple of scenes similar to the 1982 laugh riot Angoor (the scene where a suspicious Sanjay says main kyun bataun when asked for his destination by a taxi driver and an interaction between Sanjay and Suresh Menon where they agree on a code phrase and a style of knocking without which Menon is not supposed to open the hotel room door).

The scenes however contribute to the viewer's frustration as it reminds him of what a classic film Angoor was and the way scenes from that movie have been butchered here.

In conclusion, a root canal tooth job without an anesthesia seems quite a decent way to spend time rather than watching the antics of a cheesy Chatur Singh!