Total Dhamaal Movie Review: It Is Total Garbage

Total Dhamaal

Starring : Ajay Devgan, Anil Kapoor,  Madhuri Dixit, Arshad Warsi,  Javed Jaffry, Sanjai Mishra

Directed  by: Indra  Kumar

Rating:1 star

Is  there any polite way of saying this? Total Dhamaal  is  the worst most undesirable  brand of filmmaking obtainable  to mankind.  Crass,  corny, lowbrow and  utterly non-intellectualized, it boils down to  watching a bizarre  burlesque  of   line and  situations  borrowed  from lowbrow Gujarati theatre.’

This is  the kind of comedy that attempts to make  us  laugh at the  exploitative and  cheesy treatment  of the  comic  genre  by a bunch of actors  and technicians  who ought to know  better, if for no  other reason, then  only because  they have had years  of experience.

Some  people  never learn. Indra Kumar  is stuck in a time warp . He  seems  to think comedy in Hindi  has not grown beyond  the  theatre  of the absurd that he has been translocating to  cinema from the  time he made Dil in  1991 wherein he made  actors likeAamir Khan and  Kajol do the silliest  of things.

Here in Total Dhamaal which claims  to be  a sequel  to Dhamaal  and  Double  Dhamaal(I have  no recollection of what these monsterpieces were about) actors  of  the stature  of  AnilKapoor, Ajay Devgan and  Madhuri Dixit  are seen getting down  to  the basics  of broad humour.They may think they are letting their hair down. But they are actually letting something  far more  serious   down.

Do you really want to know   what this piece  of  junk masquerading as  cinema is all about? About  80  percent  of  the  plot is on the  road with characters  in pairs(Anil with Madhuri, Ajay with Sanjay Mishra, Arshad with Javed  Jaffery,  Ritesh  Deshmukh  with  PitobashTripathy)  hurling across  planes  trains and automobiles  in  search  of  a 50-crore treasure. The  special effects are  not  as bad as  the  jokes.And one  sequence where Anil andMadhuri exchange barbed insults in front of  a bewildered judge, is  mildly funny.

But that’s it.

Indra  Kumar  has always  enjoyed    making his characters dangle from  vertiginous  heights,by the  scruff of their  life. Here  it is  not just the whole cast that’s put  in  a spot. The entire creaky framework of  the  situational  comedy threatens to collapse under the burden of  its  anxiety to  somehow elicit  guffaws.

Sadly  I  did hear  audiences  roaring  in laughter and  they continued  to laugh as they came out  of  the theatre.

For me  it  is tragic  beyond measure to see  such  redoubtable talent  on a  treasure hunt that ends,aptly in a zoo, filled with  fake animals  who need to  be saved from an avaricious  plunderer.

Even Maneka Gandhi would find it hard  to  wade through  the slush of corny  laughter to  reach the pro-animal finale. Cruelty  to animals  is  unpardonable. But what about cruelty to the audience?