Director Indra Kumar has been successful with movies like "Dil", "Beta", "Ishq", "Masti" and also failed with dumb flicks like "Mann", "Rishtey" and "Pyaare Mohan". He is considered to be one of the most bankable directors in the hindi film industry. The box-office performance of his latest movie "Dhamaal" proves just that. I was in two minds of watching "Dhamaal". The trailers of the movie didn’t impress me and I was sure that he wouldn’t be able to make a better film than "Masti" (which was hilarious and the first sex comedy made in India). I’ll have to admit that I thought otherwise. Now that I have watched the movie, I’ll recommend it to everyone and if you are into watching comedy flicks, this one is a must for you. I laughed throughout the movie and I’ll go to the extent of saying that "Dhamaal" is one of the finest comedies I have watched.
It belongs to the "leave-your-brains-at-home" kind of cinema (something which David Dhawan has mastered over the years and Indra Kumar has mastered with this one movie of his!) so, you shouldn’t look for a plot here. Arshad, Jaaved, Riteish and Aashish are four good-for-nothing fellows who are in desperate need for money. They try their hands in petty crimes but remain failures there too. Then they meet Prem Chopra who has met with an accident and is about to die... before taking his last breath the man tells them that he has kept whatever he has earned all his life (ten crore) in a park in Goa. He asks them to find the money and divide it among themselves since he has nobody else. Enters a police officer (Sanjay Dutt) who has been back of Prem Chopra (who was a criminal) for ten long years. He smells something fishy and chases the four of them. He wants the money too! This is what the movie is all about but it is packed with doses of laughter and fun.
All the performances here are good. The show-stealer is Jaaved Jaffery. The man who has re-emerged as a fine actor with "salaam namaste" and "tara rum pum" (both produced by the reputed Yash Raj banner and directed by Siddharth Raaj Anand) is actually making a statement with all his performances recently. He says - "I am back after a hiatus and I am going to stay". He is fantastic as an idiot here. Arshad is good and he displays what he has - a good comic-timing. Ditto for Riteish. Aashish does a fine job too, though he is not as good as the other three. Sanjay Dutt is passable. He may not have a flair for comedy (I’m sorry to say that I didn’t find "lage raho Munnabhai" funny but its prequel was quite good) but he has improved a lot in it (he was awkward when he had to compete with Govinda in movies like "haseena maan jaayegi" and "jodi no. 1"). Asrani and Vijay Raaz are hilarious. "Dhamaal" is one of the very few films which doesn’t have a heroine and we don’t miss that fact at all. The music by Adnan Sami is below average and could be done without. Cinematography is in sync with the mood of the movie. Direction is good. I thought "Masti" was Indra Kumar’s best work and he wouldn’t be able to do anything better than that. "Dhamaal" is funnier and better.
"Dhamaal" is what a comedy flick should be like. It is as good as any of the "herapheri" movies and "no entry", if not better than them. If you want to laugh your heart out, don’t miss it. There is no way you won’t like this one.