Indian wedding

Shree Asthavinayak Cine Vision and Popcorn Entertainment's
Bhagam Bhag

Directed by: Priyadarshan
Music by: Pritam
Featuring: Govinda, Akshay Kumar, Jackie Shroff, Lara Dutta, Paresh Rawal, Amita Nangia, Asrani, Manoj Joshi, Sharat Saxena, Rajpal Yadav, Razzak Khan and special appearance Arbaaz Khan and Tanushree Dutta

Runs off-track in climax
Paresh Rawal runs a theatre group in India and Akshay Kumar and Govinda, his star performers, are compulsive flirts. Trouble starts when because of their misbehaviour the heroine (Tanushree Dutta) opts out of their prestigious tour of London at the last moment.

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Through their Indian taxi driver (Rajpal Yadav), Govinda tries to find a heroine among London's NRIs because the boss rules that anyone who can get a good substitute for the girl who resigned gets to become the hero. But it is Akshay who finds one - a woman with suicidal tendencies whom he saves from death (Lara Dutta) and convinces - the process is not shown - to become their star.

But after the first show, complications begin to come in from multiple directions. Involved in the messy-go-round (no, that's not a typo!) are a drug cartel led by one M. Gandhi (!) played by Manoj Joshi, along with his dumb acolytes, an Indian police officer, a mysterious husband of the suicidal woman (Arbaaz Khan) and a local inebriated agent (Shakti Kapoor) and his assistant (Razak Khan).

The climax is typical of contemporary Hindi film comedies - sheer buffoonery mixed with implausible happenings in the Hungama-Malamaal Weekly-Phir Hera Pheri et al mode. London becomes the unwitting backdrop for the unimaginative and only mildly amusing mayhem.

While most of the film is aptly brainless and entertaining, writer Neeraj Vora and the director run off-track towards the climax. The plot thickens as a murder mystery comes in at interval point, and after that the dead woman resurfacing finds the director unable to maintain an even tenor as he flip-flops between comedy and thrills. Ideally, the thrills should have had a comic edge and the comedy a thrilling one.

The Akshay-Govinda-Paresh Rawal relationship fails to have a good chemistry, and it is sad that Govinda is considerably wasted in a role that is essentially parallel and should have been done by a lesser actor than Akshay, who gets the best scenes and lines. The black comedy flavour in their bonding and hostility is too tepid to make a mark, while the Akshay-Lara angle is not developed enough, granting all the deliberate illogic, the reason why Lara keeps eluding the hero when she loves him and finally does tell him the real story is incomprehensible. Illogic when resorted to for creating entertainment must paradoxically possess its own logic. This does not happen here.

The technical side is very average, with Jeeva's inexplicably dull cinematography failing to capture the magic of London. The editing is languid and the songs good for the movie but without any audio value. The dialogues could have been much brighter too and fail to rise above the run-of-the-mill level in most sequences.

Except for Lara Dutta, none of the actors really impress, though Akshay's comic timing is getting better even as he is becoming repetitious. Govinda is underused but sincere, ditto Paresh Rawal, Rajpal Yadav and Shakti Kapoor. The rest do not have much to do, and Manoj Joshi hams yet again.

Watch this film if you just want to have some chuckles, chortles and a handful of guffaws. Demanding comedy buffs need to stay away.

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