A little over a week ago, director Rohit Shetty went on record to say that people shouldn’t just make a sequel of a film just because it did well the first time. His exact words:
“I think a film should do well on satellite, on television, and once the audience appreciates the film after months of its release, then only you should make a sequel out of it, and that too if you’re getting the right story, not just to cash in on a title.”
Clearly, Golmaal Again is an exception, where there’s neither story nor plot. And originality pretty much flies out of the window five minutes into the film. Don’t believe me?
Ajay Devgn’s Gopal storms into the screen with Varlaam Varlaam Va from Vijay’s Bairavaa. Gopal gives a menacing stare, swiftly gives three people a punch at a time, and walks away with a demeanour as cool as a cucumber. Except, we saw Vijay do the exact same thing early this year. Gopal also gives off Singham vibes, a character that Devgn played in Hindi. Except, he calls him “yeda” (crazy).
Shetty’s story is a comedy of errors infused with horror (hah!) and comedy (read: toilet humour), and also marks the return of the obnoxious five – Gopal (Devgn), Madhav (Arshad Warsi), Lucky (Tusshar Kapoor), Laxman Sharma (Kunal Khemu), and Laxman Prasad (Shreyas Talpade). The usual supporting characters like Sanjay Mishra, Johnny Lever, Vrajesh Hirjee, and Mukesh Tiwari are there, too, in addition to the two female leads Anna Mathew (Tabu) and Damini (Parineeti Chopra).
The obnoxious five work as thugs for rich land sharks and return to the orphanage they grew up in after the death of its founder. Gopal, Laxman Prasad and Madhav, Lucky and Laxman Sharma are rivals. They live in the palatial house in Ooty belonging to a retired, blind colonel just so they could grab his plot, too. Their reunion is orchestrated by Anna who has other motives to bring them all under the same roof.
Gopal, a man with a temper, is terribly afraid of ghosts ergo, he hates nightfall. Laxman Prasad is like a “mother” to him who calms him down and sings lullabies to his man-child whenever night falls. Madhav is the ultimate prankster who devices a plan to send Gopal running out of the house in fear. Laxman Sharma and Lucky are, well, just there. Existing, sprinkling some unnecessary toilet humour on the screen.
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The lack of a plot makes it harder to summarise the film, indicating that perhaps Shetty was enamoured by the idea of bringing back the obnoxious five to the screen with hipper pop culture references and rehash of old Hindi songs.
There’s a point when the obnoxious five peak the permissible obnoxious levels – where all they do is run around the house, breaking things, using toilet utilities to fight each other, all this with a background music straight of Tom and Jerry. It would’ve made sense had they all been the teenagers we are introduced in the beginning of the film. As a bunch of 40-year-olds indulging in these juvenile antics, it’s pretty questionable. Just why?
Meme
The film’s humour wavers; sometimes funny, sometimes there aren’t too enough eye-rolls to react to that. But if you leave the obnoxious five aside, and focus on the supporting characters, there’s a far better movie right there. Sanjay Mishra as the old hipster imitating Shatrughan Sinha, backed with terrific comedy timing. His jokes are silly but his delivery is top notch, eliciting quite a few laughs.
Johnny Lever, too, is still in form, even though he’s pretty much rehashing his old jokes. At one point, when Prakash Raj’s Vasu Reddy gets almost electrocuted while touching a stage mic, Lever’s Pappi Bhai touches the same mic and does an exaggerated version of getting severely electrocuted. He turns around, laughs and says, “I was kidding. I’m experienced at this,” and goes back in character. Clearly Lever had been raring to do this for a while.
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It would be a while until Parineeti Chopra grows out of her manic pixie dream girl-like characters. In this film, heavily peppered with some supernatural elements, Parineeti goes back to basics where her introduction begins with her hair strategically billowing in the air, blue and doe-eyed, simmering with excitement, and her voice muted and replaced with the sound of romantic background music. And of course, the hero just watching this pretty girl talk.
Gopal falls for her and it’s almost pedophilia, considering they all refer to her as ‘bachchi‘ (child), with her trotting around in dungarees and talking like a child. It gets more questionable when, in his mind, the two of them are dancing to a rendition of the song Neendh Churayi Meri, a song that came out when Parineeti was eight years old. And Devgn, who was in the original song, was a well-established hero back then, paired with his now-wife, Kajol. Even for the sake of pop-culture it’s unsettling enough.
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Recommended
The real jokes in the film come in the form of the not-so-subtle product placements. It’s a laugh riot to watch how lazily the products are placed and focused on, unabashedly floating around in the screen. We see you, Ching’s Secret, Finolex, and Kwality Walls. We see you loud and clear.
Nevertheless, Golmaal Again, makes for a decent watch if you are cool with a long first half, and a dark and confusing second half. It’s a film that would appeal to many just because it belongs to the “oh-so-funny” Golmaal franchise and if you are looking to kick back this weekend. If not for the obnoxious five, watch it for the supporting cast, the real heroes of this mish-mash.
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The Golmaal Again review is a Silverscreen original article. It was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the movie. Silverscreen.in and its writers do not have any commercial relationship with movies that are reviewed on the site.