Double Dhamaal Movie Review: Troubled Dhamaal

Indra Kumar's latest release, Double Dhamaal, is a comedy made with a certain audience in mind. This audience is the sort looking for mindless entertainment to get them through the weekend, filled with punch lines and gags that appeal to the lowest common denominators of the cine going audiences. And fortunately, or otherwise, Double Dhamaal is a film that delivers the goods when it comes to that.

Double Dhamaal takes us back to the exploits of the four con-artists from the first film, Roy (Riteish Deshmukh), Adi (Arshad Warsi), Boman (Aashish Chowdhary) and the moronic Manav (Javed Jaffrey). They're in dire straits, down to picking people's pockets in bars to eke out a living, when they spot their old friend Kabir (Sanjay Dutt), riding around in a flashy car and working out of a humongous office. Kabir, as they discover, has quit the police force and become a businessman of sorts by conning a rich woman, Kamini (Mallika Sherawat) into marrying him. The foursome decides that Kabir is their best bet at the filthy rich life they dream of, and start blackmailing him to get partnership stakes in his company. However, their dreams are shattered when they realise that Kabir was the one playing around with them, aided by his partner Kamini and sister Kia (Kangna Ranaut), and has conned them out of a cool few hundred crores belonging to a Mumbai gangster Bata Bhai (Satish Kaushik). When they trace Kabir back to Macau, they seek revenge, starting a game of 'con banega crorepati' in the process.

Double Dhamaal's main laughs come from outlandish gags more than clever comedy, with the latter almost absent from the film. So audiences have to giggle at things like the four lead actors doing some terrible Bollywood impressions and people rollicking in sewage having mistaken it for a crude oil find. Satish Kaushik's Bata Bhai is a throwback to his '90s era comedy in David Dhawan films, his character, with lines like 'hit films ke flop heroes', almost an updated version of his famous Pappu Pager, from Deewana Mastana. His initial setup, that of a bhai trying to switch over to being a baba, is also an unoriginal gag, a joke floating around since the '80s when Johnny Lever performed it in his shows under the title, 'gunda melodies' (look it up), though Raju Srivastava made this version famous more recently on TV.

The film's second half finds comedy mainly in having the four leads dress in various getups, though it's hard to understand what is so funny about Aashish Chowdhary dressed up in drag, and Riteish Deshmukh performing in blackface, complete with an afro and a chorus of kalia, kalia, kalia everytime he steps on screen, bordering on racism. Javed Jaffrey's majorly moronic act and Arshad Warsi's 'asardar sardar' act still manages to liven up things though.

Double Dhamaal is hardly a film that is riding on its acting laurels. Sanjay Dutt is fairly okay, though he doesn't get many comic bits to carry, while Arshad Warsi as Adi, seems to be revisiting the same character he's been playing in the Golmaal series. Riteish and Aashish ham their way through the proceedings. Javed Jaffrey is in the same league, but his manchild Manav does get some of the funniest moments in the film. Kangna Ranaut is okay, though her role is just about that of a prop. The film, thankfully, does devote a lot of screentime to Mallika Sherawat. How Ms.Sherawat carries on in cinema with the most minimal of acting skills is a mystery waiting to be solved.

Musically, Double Dhamaal is a disappointment. Except for the Oye Oye track, which basically takes its tune from the old tirchi topiwale tune (itself stolen from the Miami Sound Machine's rhythm is gonna get you), the rest of the music in this film offers nothing memorable. Mallika Sherawat herself will be disappointed by her Jalebi Bai item number.

Double Dhamaal does offer up its share of laughs. But they're few and far in between. Too many gags, too many puns and too few smart situations mean Indra Kumar's latest is basically Bollywood's take on a set of loony toons, a one time watch if there's nothing better you can find.