Story: Ashok Singhania (Saif Ali Khan) and his friend Kumar (Riteish Deshmukh) are sent to mental asylum by Ashok’s greedy uncle Kunwar Amarnath Singh (Ram Kapoor). The motive is to takeover all of Ashok’s property. But story takes a curious turn when lookalikes of Ashok, Kumar and Kunwar are found in the same asylum. To add to the misery another set of lookalikes of all these characters appear in the plot. How do they merge into the story? Will the confusion let Ashok gain back his property or Kunwar will be successful in his plans? Forms the rest of the story.
Performances: Saif Ali Khan enters into Sajid’s ham fest with effortless ease. He surrenders himself totally to the director and tries his best to throw life into a wafer thin plot and even thinner characterisations. He is decent. Riteish Deshmukh is as usual dependable and delivers yet another goofy act in Humshakals. There are several scenes which rises above the ordinary due to his effortless comic timing. Ram Kapoor is brilliant in a character which has grey shades. He is commendable in several scenes which requires him to show his evil side. To give credit where it is due, all the three actors give their all and succeed in making this movie bearable for certain parts. Actresses like Bipasha Basu, Esha Gupta and Tamannah have nothing much to do but look glamorous in those few scenes and songs, and they successfully do so. Satish Shah as the warden of the mental asylum is a riot. He gets some amazing scenes and is at his comical best. Nawab Shah is competent. Darshan Jariwala, Chunkey Pandey and Suresh Menon are hardly there.
Technical Team: Sajid Khan the writer and director disappoints yet again. He makes a total mess of what could have been a fun outing. He barely manages to evoke some laughter and most of the time the jokes are in bad to ordinary category. Screenplay by Sajid Khan, Robin Bhatt and Akarsh Khurana is poorly written and tests your patience at various levels. If not for few funny episodes the narration drags endlessly, which is a crime for a movie which promises 9 times the fun. Dialogues by Sajid Khan and Adhir Bhatt are ordinary and hardly humorous. Ravi Yadav manages to capture the chaos amidst beautiful locations of London and Mauritius and he does well. Music by Himesh Reshammiya is average and lacks recall value. Baring Piya Ke Bazaar and to an extent Caller Tune, other numbers just add to the runtime and your patience. Editor Bunty Nagi loses plot along with the director and fails to maintain the momentum in the narration.
Best Scenes:
* Board Room sequence
* Few scenes involving Satish Shah in the asylum
* Few moments in the climax
Conclusion: Sajid Khan yet again gives us a movie in Naam bade aur darshan chote category. The idea of having three characters in triple role may have sounded fun on paper but what transpires on screen is hardly exciting. All the high production values are wasted on such an apology of a script. As mentioned earlier there are hardly few moments in that 2 hours 30 minutes which evokes few laughter. Many sequences which are forced into the Screenplay to add humour fail miserably. To top it all several sequences that are showcased in the promotion are edited out of the final cut (including the bikini sequence). Sajid Khan hits an all time low especially in the genre which he had mastered earlier in his own Housefull series. In his attempt to redeem himself from a failure named Himmatwala, Sajid Khan goes all out and tries to package too much into this movie and fails miserably. Hopefully he has a better comeback.
Conclusion: (**) One extra star for Satish Shah and Riteish Deshmukh
Desi Movie Critic 