Chala Mussaddi - Office Office Movie Review: This 'Office' Is Closed For Business

While it's a tried-and-tested premise, Chala Musaddi Office Office is definitive proof that the best of concepts will snap if stretched to its limit. Though this reviewer is a confessed fan of the television sitcom, especially for Pankaj Kapur's everyman character Musaddi Lal who gets into a new bureaucratic bind every week, one must admit to being sorely disappointed by the film adaptation of an otherwise good series.

The film adaptation, directed by Rajiv Mehra, with a script by Ashwini Dhir, sees the TV sitcom literally ported to the big screen, with the same topline cast, and even the same sort of comic punches. Pankaj Kapur's Musaddi Lal this time is a retired schoolmaster, who leaves on a teerth yatra with his late wife's ashes, only to come back to find that he has been prematurely declared dead and his pension has been stopped. Along the way, he runs into an assorted set of crooked government types, including dirty doctors, treacherous ticket collectors and profiteering pandits, all of whom he has to pay off on the insistence of his street-smart, aggressive son, Bunty, played by Gaurav Kapoor. Once back home, Musaddi decides to wage a battle against the bureaucracy, to prove that he is, indeed, Musaddi, and he's perfectly alive and kicking, something that the corrupt penpushers of the pension department refuse to believe.

Where the film adaptation begins to seem ill-conceived is in the fact that director Mehra has his main cast, made up of the talented Deven Bhojani, Manoj Pahwa, Sanjay Mishra, Hemant Pandey and Asawari Joshi, kitted out in so many roles, that it stretches credulity. So, the same Deven Bhojani who is a junior babu at the pension office, is also the collector from whom Musaddi needs to seek an affidavit, while the same Manoj Pahwa who is a doctor, also plays TC on Musaddi's train journey. While one can understand the move from a comic standpoint, the end result is that instead of watching a film, the experience leaves you wondering whether this isn't just an 'Office Office' marathon from TV instead.

The film's humour is flawed as well, pulling the same comic tricks that one is familiar with on TV. While things like Deven Bhojani's nahin toh doh baatein hongi jokes and Asawari Joshi constantly doing household work in office is funny enough on TV, it seems Rajiv and Ashwini both fail to realise that on a bigger screen, you need more impactful humour as well. Especially since Musaddi Lal's troubles so perfectly capture the hapless of the Indian common man, one would have hoped that the makers of the film would have focused on more realistic humour as well, finding the funny in the pathos of Musaddi's situations. That the team behind the film chooses to keep the film so simplistically predictable, with an end that you can spot from a mile that is quite a disappointment.

Still, the film has its silver linings, sparkling especially in the acting department. There is nothing that needs to be said of Pankaj Kapur's Musaddi, given that the nation has been in love with him for years in the role now. Kapur puts on a master class in acting every time he's on screen in any film and it's the same here, with his helpless and hopefulness in the worst of circumstances coming across in every scene. The others in the ensemble cast, Deven Bhojani, Manoj Pahwa, Sanjay Mishra, Hemant Pandey and Asawari Joshi, have been living with their characters for years now, and manage to make it a great job too, with elastic Bhojani especially so. The only other fixed member of the cast is Gaurav Kapoor, and he does well for himself.

If Chala Musaddi Office Office' works in any part, credit is due to the talented cast of players it features, and the humour inherent in the 'Office Office' concept. Otherwise, the film is a disappointment on Ashwini Dhir and Rajiv Mehra's parts, who fail to bring anything new to the table here. Indeed, even with a great concept, this film stretches it so much, that it just serves to dull the otherwise sharp comic punches that 'Office Office' has been throwing at its audiences for years.