What can we expect from a film that has a triple indication of mental discrepancy in its title? A madcap, zany, kooky laughathon? We got it! Vikram Bhatt, who successfully delivered a shiver-giver earlier the same year in Raaz, comes up with a clever and largely enjoyable adaptation of Jonathan Lynn’s The Whole Nine Yards.
The original wasn’t anything to write home about. But this Indianized adaptation, with enough eccentric twists and turns to boggle the most accomplished contortionist’s wildest imagination, scores several points for its dead-on writing, above-average production values, unique action sequences, and masterful performances.
Producer Firoz Nadiadwala, who earlier crafted another sparkling comedy Hera Pheri with a major part of this film’s cast, spared no expenses to make sure the giggles are married to glamour. Hence, director Vikram Bhatt comes through much better in this comedy than he did in horror within the restricted budget of Raaz.
Add to these, a whammer of a clamour that takes pungent potshots at the cult of gangsterism, and we get a brew that bristles with the balladry of burlesque.
The plot is a mindboggler. Awaara Paagal Deewana looks at the underworld with shuddering chortles. Unlike Dhawan’s horrendously misused star cast, the stars in Bhatt’s film rise and shine with amusing grace.
Rather than go straight for an adaptation, Bhatt elects to revamp the original. Taking The Whole Nine Yards, he goes that extra mile in search of a chuckle and smile. Akshay Kumar is the poker-faced, fun-loving gangster Guru whose evil brother-in-law Vikrant (Rahul Dev) has a penchant for masked mayhem.
In a rather laugh-heartedly done preamble, Om Puri (surprisingly out of sorts as a droll mobster) kicks the bucket, leaving his evil empire to his seething son Vikrant and the sultry son-in-law Guru. The conflict between the two antagonists provides the film with the perfect pretext to unleash a feast of furious fists. The Hong Kong-styled action, with Akshay Kumar flying, hurling, and somersaulting through the air in heart-stopping moments, provides the comedy with the right amount of counter-action.
Miraculously for Hindi cinema, and luckily for the comic genre, Bhatt avoids the mandatory doses of melodrama that creep into Indian comedy films willy-nilly. The laughter never slackens as the entire takes off into foreign shores, in more ways than one.
Set in New York (a setting which, justified by the anything-goes-in-a-comedy motto, occasionally changes to Newark in the narration), a large part of the comic contingent is set in a fetching American suburb where a wife-abused dentist Anmol (Aftab Shivdasani) suddenly finds more excitement in his life than he had bargained for, when the mobster Guru (Akshay Kumar) moves in next door.
Borrowing actor Matthew Perry’s fluster from The Whole Nine Yards, Bhatt builds a whole pyramid of characters, like the bullied dentist, his gangster-fixated nurse (Arati Chabria), his tormenting wife (Amrita Arora), and mother-in-law (Supriya Pilgaonkar). To add the character of the dentist’s father-in-law in the over-heated brew is a masterstroke, missing from the Hollywood original. Paresh Rawal, as the dentist’s father-in-law, is as usual, a complete scene-stealer. He infuses a determined entertainment value in the most outrageous of lines.
And dialogue writer Neeraj Vora, the other star attraction of this comedy, has given Rawal a hefty haul of howlers. Consequently, Rawal as the zany father-in-law who keeps forgetting everyone’s name, including his own, brings the house down.
Crowded with characters, some of the other main players like Sunil Shetty and Aftab Shivdasani suffer from under-developed roles. Shetty, whose comic efforts were ably tapped recently in Yeh Tera Ghar Yeh Mera Ghar, plays the muscled goon with relish. But his role doesn’t go anywhere. As for Johnny Lever, as Sunil Shetty’s sidekick, the character provides one laugh too many. There’s no need for an official comedian when everyone in the cast is having a blast.
Apart from Paresh Rawal, only Akshay Kumar emerges from the fog and fume of fresh-faced farce with a clearly structured role as the sullen mobster. The film is a showcase for his abilities as a fighter, romanticist, and farceur. Some of his comic sequences, such as the one where he exchanges mob-prattle with the love-smitten dentist’s nurse, are priceless.
But the film’s comic slant topples over the edge in the second half, when ranting and raving act as substitutes for genuine comic situations in the plot. The long-drawn climax in a desert, with fancy wheels and flouncy squeals filling the screen like chorus dancers in an over-elaborately choreographed pageant, simply gets on our nerves.
The comedy gets into budge and loses its way as it tries to pack in the mandatory 180 minutes of mainstream conventions. But the humour is fun while it lasts. The production design is imaginative. No pains have been spared to make the farce an optical feast. Pravin Bhatt’s cinematography is conventionally appealing. The backdrop looks seductive but never at the characters’ cost. Anu Malik’s music does nothing to support the film’s diverting ambitions. One song, Jisse Hasna Rona Hai, featuring all the three lead pairs, has been clumsily shot. A symbolic nod to the film’s awry mood?
The anything-goes narration takes the characters to far-off places like Muscat and a bull-arena in Spain. One song, shot dreamily on Aftab Shivdasani and Amrita Arora in NYC, catches the still-intact World Trade Centre looming indulgently in the background. It reminds us of why we need to laugh more often in the cinema and how infrequently Hindi films provide us with the opportunity to do so.
