Golmaal Again
Movies like these come rarely, luring veterans like me to sharpen the rusty quill and dip it into ink again; and rolling up the old sleeves and uttering the war cry, going for it.
This movie is fourth in the installment of the Golmaal franchise, first in the order of silliness, and last in the order of movies, I’ll ever watch at gunpoint in the future.
A lost, orphaned team of the Fat, the Big, the Ugly, the Dumb, and the Dumbest from a foster home comes together in a merry joust for a property heist, only to discover its single-minded unanimity of opinion on the subject of a girl-ghost who refuses to go away despite being dispatched in pretty imaginative and unique ways by the rogue party. Succumbing to a brief, unfamiliar fit of honor and esprit de corps, the orphans drop their petty rivalries and decide to get the girl justice so that she may be siphoned off to heavens in a starry trail of nostalgia and sparkly bubbles. The paranormal romance quickly runs out of steam in the engine, wind in the tires, Stepney in the boot, and a driver in the front seat.
I can’t but make a special mention of the man who’s never owned a dictionary or heard of a thesaurus.
Most of the laughter in the hall is spontaneous combustion: you laugh because the next guy is laughing, and he’s laughing because the kid next to him is choking on the popcorn, and you don’t even know if they’re laughing in derision, or laughing at themselves for having dished out the crispies for such a bizarre outing on a working day. I suspect the movie has done so well because there’s no competition right now – unless you call ‘Big Boss’ a thing to reckon with.
As soon as you step into the hall, you realize it’s an experience that immediately calls for truckloads of popcorn and soda, and if not, a bottle of sleeping pills or a hefty joint for emotional support and pain relief. I’m all for the therapeutic benefits of marijuana – call me if you need some research support. I kept pressing the forward button on my cell phone too – and I wasn’t even high – but the stubborn modern magic wand would just not obey my commands.
The writers, adroitly – before you can blink or strain an ear to adjust your steps to the change in beat – mix the horror genre with comedy, and tragedy with absurdity.
The movie asks that you temporarily suspend your disbelief, or better still, permanently leave it by the wayside when you visit: for your imagination is bound to be jogging hard, and gasping for breath and asking for a lifesaver when you collapse at the popcorn and soda stall. Where else will you have blondes in hotpants picking tea leaves from the gardens in Ooty; or clairvoyants summoning the dead from their evening tea and toast; or toy trains snaking through sunlit green vales with blue clouds and bluer blossoms?
The movie is a lot like reading Shakespeare: you want to take a walk every ten minutes to see that your faculties are still working and your limbs haven’t gone numb from the brain freeze that’s coming down the pipes in the hall.
Avoid the frenzy and media hype. Or, judge for yourself.