DULHE RAJA Cast: Govinda, Raveena Tandon, Kader Khan, Johnny Lever, Monish Behl, Prem Chopra & Asrani Direction: Harmesh Malhotra Rating: * * |
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O baba, it's a roadside dhaba. Competing fiercely with a five-ishtar hotel, the dhaba attracts German, Greek and Georgian foodies out to chomp cheap goodies. Wow, now that's quite a kooky kick-off point for a steaming hot plot. What could be funnier than a hotel magnate going pomegranate over the bust-up in his business, while the daal chaawal joint makes big bucks? But shucks, Dulhe Raja directed by Harmesh Malhotra, blows it, subjecting you to an endless far-out fit. Malhotra, who made hiss-story with Nagina (1986), the snake-turned-into-Sridevi box office whopper, attempts to hustle bustle into the David Dhawan Bhavan. And trips all over the garish sofa-sets, wooden staircases and embroidered pillow-cases. Loud, lewd and loony in the pejorative sense of the word, this comedy is as frustrating as crying over spilt yoghurt. Quite a duh-hee-hee vada, what. Sure you may cackle occasionally, despite yourself at the manic malarkey, which revels in compelling everyone on the scene to behave either as zanily as zebras who've lost their stripes or woody woodpeckers who've blunted their beaks. Eeeeks. For starters, the hotel boss K.K. Singhania (Kader Khan) is afflicted by the mania of clinching dead-loss deals. How he squeals, treating his chief manager (Johnny Lever) as if he were as dispensable as orange peels. Worse, when the dhaba dude Raja (Govinda) pops up, KK almost chews up a coffee cup and kicks the competitor as if he were a pariah pup. Yup. Next: KK and Raja clown-`n'-frown, even jogging through town to assert that they're at loggerheads. For that twist in the tall tale, KK's darling daughter (Raveena Tandon) chooses Raja as her groom to wreak an utterlyhare-brained kind of vendetta on her mad dad. Sad. Cluttering up the scene further, is a muttering- stuttering mob of meanies, including a creepy Casanova (Mohnish Behl), a dithering don (Prem Chopra), and a corrupt cop (Asrani) whose ear-shattering yowls and howls can be heard all the way from Vile Parle to Vladivostok. You get the potty picture, then. Dizzy duets picturised in Hyderabad's Ramoji Rao studio, a kinky qawwali, spondylitis-inducing slapstick, ragbagags, innuendoes and cornball jokes are the ingredients of this tummy-turning porridge of a picture. Scant attention is paid to updated technique so that the cinematography, editing and the sound seem to belong to a bygone era. As for Anand-Milind's music, the jingle-jangle is the sort of stuff you've heard a trillion times before. On the positive side, there are about five minutes of truly outrageous madness. Like Kader Khan chasing the hero, who's determined to hand over a sack of jewels to the income tax department. Or the Casanova getting the pasting of his life before a couple of beer-swigging bimbettes. Above all, Govinda is superb. His impeccable sense of comic timing, his unbridled joie de vivre and unquestionable gift of the gab, are on full display. Just watch him improvising one-liners, dancing with abandon and spoofing politicians (his take-off on Laloo Prasad Yadav is a scream). And you're convinced that this Entertainer No. 1 deserves much much more than such a dusty-musty Dhool-e-Raja. |
