Dhamaal 4
Starring: Ajay Devgn, Riteish Deshmukh, Arshad Warsi, Sanjay Mishra, Jaaved Jaaferi, Esha Gupta, Sanjeeda Shaikh, Anjali Anand, Upendra Limaye, Vijay Patkar & Ravi Kishan
Directed by Indra Kumar
There is a whole lot of in-house references in this Disneyesque madcap comedy-adventure. When Riteish Deshmukh and the lovely Anjali Anand are midair in a balloon (don’t ask how they got there), Riteish points to the horizon, “Indradhanush (rainbow) and Indra Kumar (this film’s director) both have a story to tell.”
Not a very amusing line. But you chuckle nonetheless.
Dhamaal 4 dares you not to. This utterly zonked-out fun-fest of a film has a whole lot to say about back stories. You may not catch all the tongue-in-shriek references to the other three Dhamaal films. But you can’t escape the feeling of being in the midst of a riotous adventure with the best special effects I’ve seen in a film of this genre.
After a poor start, the relentless riotousness gets infectious. Although director Indra Kumar remains stuck in the traditional Gujarati theatre of the absurd even when cinema has moved beyond the Dhurandhar era (we are not debating here whether that is good or bad), there is an earnest wackiness to the narration that keeps one hooked to hokum.
There is a kind of naïve innocence about Indra Kumar rancour-free comedy. Indu loves cliffhanging humour. A majority of the well-choreographed episodes in Dhamaal 4 find the characters perched on precarious precipices in a human chain, clinging to the slippery surface as the world around them collapses.
It is, in theory, a scary scenario. See how Indra Kumar transforms acrophobia into a fun experience. The director and his writers (Balvinder Singh Suri, Paritosh Painter, Vedd Prakash) make risible use of the eccentric characters who are depicted in three groups, each mean and rather unpleasant. Even the two bratty kids who accompany Ajay Devgn and Sanjay Mishra are far from angelic.
But they all learn to be more charitable and giving by the time the plot thunders with prankish delight, to the finishing line.
My favourite characters are the couple played by Riteish Deshmukh and Anjali Anand. Her track starts off as being brazenly bonded to body shaming (no one needs to get offended, no offence intended to any group or community as long as no one tries to decode the tone-deaf naivete). But she soon begins to throw her weight around in the screenplay, in a surprisingly pleasant show of strength.
The characters acquire their vigour through their propensity to plunge into the parodic plot without questioning its code of ethics. We really cannot be offended by Indra Kumar’s political incorrectness (in one prolonged episode, a height-challenged man is thrown around like a dishrag by Riteish’s sassy overweight wife while everyone cheers). He means no harm.
Dhamaal 4 intends to sweep us into a wacky whimsical fantasy world of a treasure hunt in cave that collapses all around the characters. Luckily, the film holds. But the long-legged doggerel-on-film could have been a lot less lengthy. The vertiginous episodes with the characters hanging on to their dear lives at the precipice are way too time-taking.
29 years ago Indra Kumar had Aamir Khan crossing from one skyscraper to another across an iron pipe which collapses midway. Things haven’t changed in the director’s world. His sheer obdurate fixation on comic dramatic elements from the past drives Dhamaal 4 forward frantically.
Much of the ruckus is infantile. But hats off to this long lasting director for keeping alive the child within. Also praise for Devgn for displaying such a healthy team spirit. Sometimes he just stands in the background waiting for the fun to climax. Devgn makes sure we don’t miss Akshay Kumar.
