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Cast: Kamal Haasan, Tabu, Amrish Puri
| Direction: Kamal Haasan
| Rating: * * * * | |
| She's a number. She can perform mobike stunts, bash up roguish runts and fob off male admirers with ghastly grunts. Go ahead then. Meet Ms Laxmi Godbole, who can also go Ole ole, dole dole, besides displaying more brawn power than all those ruff-tuff heroes from Sholay. And hey, it hardly matters if this Chachi 420 is actually a man in drag. What a gag! Tootsie did it, Mrs Doubtfire too. Ditto Kamal Haasan, just over a year ago, in his Tamil tickler, Avvai Shanmughi. The ace actor now makes his debut as a director with a Hindi remake that retains the original's hyuk-hyuk humour. After weeks and months of sitting in the gaudytorium, your face furrowed with a frown, you at last grin and giggle at the frantic antics-'n'-tactics of the cross-gender clown. Truly, here's a one-man show (make that one-woman) which leaves you aglow. With his flair for perfect comic timing and a face flexible as rubber, he carries the entire burden of the jokes, jibes and jabberwocky on his expert shoulders. Of course, his abiding aficionados, including yours truly, do regret the avoidable lapses into vulgarity like that chit-chatter of brassiere sizes, the obvious comparison of coconuts to you-know-what and a line of dialogue referring to a blouse a la Choli ke peechhe kya hai. Well, well, well. But what the hell! Only a prude would just harp on the crude and ignore the rest. After all, the bottom-line is that this cha cha Chachi is quite a scream, as welcome as ice-cream. Here's someone who even dares to dream a daft dream. Deftly, the opening reels establish the nice guy credentials of Jai (Kamal Haasan), a prancing-pirouetting film dance director. His wealthy wife (Tabu) walks out on him after a petty squabble. "Divorce!" she thunders. An indifferent judge approves her decision. Sniff. Jaibhai, it is decreed, can meet his l'il daughter only once a week. Life's bleak till our man, thanks to a boozard make-up maestro (Johnny Walker back in action), is transformed into a homely ayah. Almost unrecognisable, Jia plays nursemaid to his daughter, in the bargain even winning over the heart of his tyrannical father-in-law (Amrish Puri). A neat switch on the saucy situation in Professor, in which the dragon-like Lalita Pawar flipped for a wheezing Shammi Kapoor. Practically every male in sight flips for the cho-chweet Chachi. Besides the pa-in-law, there's the besotted landlord (Paresh Rawal), who oohs and aahs over the feisty frau in a nine-yard sari, as if she were Sushmita Sen, Aishwarya Rai and Diana Hayden rolled into one. Follow madcap situations galore, like the remixed Macarena bhajan. And there's Jai's secret life led in a teeming chawl, reminiscent of Pushpak, which comes as a huge relief from the usual matinee diet of violence and gore. Needless to chuckle, our clever man - err... woman - has his cake and digests it too. Make peace, not divorce, is the pitch of this sweet confection. Often, Gulzar's dialogue sparkles with the sort of puns and wit one evidenced in the repartee he once wrote for Hrishikesh Mukherjee's laugh-raisers like Golmaal and Khoobsurat. His lyrics are tangy, too, though the music by Vishal Bharadwaj is disappointingly more fury and fluster than melodious. Technically, the enterprise passes muster. Finally, it is the performances that keep you engaged and entertained. Of the supporting cast, Paresh Rawal is simply brilliant; Amrish Puri is correctly controlled. However, Om Puri, as the cellphone crazy creep, tends to go over the top at times. Ayesha Jhulka in a micro-role is as decorative as a Christmas tree bauble. Despite a thankless and sketchy role, Tabu is reliably competent. Clearly, Chachi 420 is a splendid showcase for the actor-producer-director. Here's welcoming him back to Mumbai moviedom. Chameleon-like, he slips so felicitously into the aunt's robes that at the end of 16 reels you may end up calling him Kamal Haseen. |
