This Day That Year: Sanjay Dutt-Govinda’s Ek Aur Ek Gyarah Clocks 22 Years

The world of David Dhawan and Govinda is a universe of insouciant improbabilities. Nobody knows what’s to come, not  Govinda who goes fully with  the farcical flow, and certainly not Dhawan who allows his once-favourite actor’s improvisational ingenuity to take over the proceedings to a point where directorial inputs are almost an intrusion.

    Often while watching Dhawan’s recent works you wish he exercized more control over the parodic proceedings . His earlier films  such as  Shola Aur Shabnam, Bol Radha Bol and Aankhen were sparkling specimens of situational humour.

   Though    on the whole marginally better than his other  recent farce-farce-door-door  comic romps  like   Kyunkii Main Jhooth Nahin Bolta, Chor Machaye Shor and the  previous Govinda-Dutt  pair-o-dy  Jodi No 1,  Ek Aur Ek Gyarah  relies too heavily on the crackling, hissing, whooping and yelping chemistry between Govinda and Dutt to  actually hold together as a complete universe of comic configuration.

  The brittle bristling world of  abrasive witticisms , and  David Dhawan’s trademark  theme of impersonations  and camouflages within a posh joint-family set-up have been done to bludgeoning death  in the director’s earlier works.   At times you feel you’re watching Govinda and Sanjay Dutt do   a slicker avatar of   Haseena Maan Jayegi and Jodi No. 1 with better songs(by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy) and  better production values.

  However in the never-never-never land of Govinda and Dhawan there’s  many a slip between the  sick and the slick. While the two lead actors with some help from the dimunitive  Rajpal Yadav(playing a  monkey-like family retainer who prances in and out of the frames as fast as  Dhawan edits them)     hold up some  farcical sequences splendidly,  the lack of a cohesive  and intelligible  pattern in the narrative finally take their toll on the audiences’  responses.  Soon you tire of the  titter -shooters   and their endless shenanigans in restricted defence-sensitive areas(do not miss the barbed wires).

 The absence of any seriousness  in the nature of the comedy is a  constant impediment to   enjoying the sheer presence of the Govinda-Dutt combo.  Yunus Sajawal’s sloppy  screenplay cannibalizes  material from Dhawan’s earlier comedies , also  scenes from the Steve Martin-Michael Caine comedy Dirty Rotten Soundrels, and then expels the material into the two protagonist’s orbit.

  Sanjay Dutt and Govinda adlib to their hearts’ content.  They’re fun to  watch except when their dialogues get ribald . Alarmingly,  the leading ladies seem to enjoy being treated as playthings.  References to  “handles” and “deep penetrations”  could’ve been   avoided .  The sexual  thrust  seems strangely at odds with the  artless manoeuvres of  the  grownup boys, slightly soft in the head   who just want to have fun like Jim Carrrey and Jeff Daniels in Dumb & Dumber.

     There was nothing dumb about the screenplay in that role-model film on cretinous comic camaraderie.  Wish the same could be said  about Ek Aur Ek Gyarah. Like the battle tank in  which   our hyphenated hee-hee heroes pilot the outrageous climax(burlesque during time of the Iraqi war??!!!) , the narrative too functions in a chaotic rudderless zigzag.

     The  mixups and run-ins with anti-national villains(Gulshan Grover and the David Dhawan regular Ashish Vidyarthi who’s pummelled with humiliating regularity) are so amateurish , you wish  David Dhawan would stop celebrating the virtues of numbing  naïvete. But yes , this one certainly has  the  best music score ever in a David Dhawan. Take a bow , Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy!  Thanks to  zingy choreography  you just can’t stop humming Jogiya, O dushmana, Beimaan mohabbat and the title song. But did Dhawan have to use the  title song like a phantom companion to the heroes’ hijinks?

   Govinda sustains the surface sparkle to a  large extent. When he breaks into a plaintive Bhajan in his own voice he steals your heart and then breaks it.  His comic timing shouldn’t surprise anyone who has been watching him  wade through the most gooey muck of mirth possible.  Sanjay Dutt is the surprise packet. Demonstrating a  better  comic timing than he did in his early chuckle- fests with Govinda, Dutt this time gives the comic virtuoso tit for tat.

 Speaking of that, the romantic interest provided by Amrita Arora and Nandini Sen is  glamorously decorative. As airheaded giggle-and-gurgle  space-fillers the two ladies serve their purpose well. Jackie Shroff’s non-comic part serves as a decent foil to the two protagonists’  constant hiss-and-crackle.

 After a point  it all becomes tediously repetitive. Comedy when stretched beyond decent limits gets to be a pain in  a  region much below the neck. And when Ashish Vidyarthi gets shot in the leg once too often (leg before wicked?!) you want to stand and scream, “No more”. That’s exactly what Dhawan and Govinda have promised. As their last farcical hurrah, Ek Aur Ek Gyarah  makes you smile a  while. And never mind if the chuckles get feebler by the frame. It’s fun in fits.