FILM REVIEW SACHIN CHATTE
Film: Dhamaal 4
Cast: Ajay Devgn, Riteish Deshmukh, Arshad Warsi, Anjali Anand
Directed by : Indra Kumar
Duration: 2 hours 22 minutes
Rating : * 1/2
The Dhamaal franchise is now almost 20 years old — which is quite an achievement for a series built on a storyline thinner than a Bollywood hero’s patience before the interval. The makers managed to squeeze out two films in the early years (2007 and 2011), but when fresh ideas became as rare as logic in a slapstick comedy, the obvious solution was simple: recycle the old ones.
All that is needed is for the familiar faces to show up. If one or two actors are unavailable, no problem — just replace them. The women in the franchise have proved especially replaceable. Not a single female actor has returned to reprise her role, unlike the men, who have become almost permanent residents of the Dhamaal universe.
Ajay Devgn was absent from the first two films but has taken centre stage in the last two. Riteish Deshmukh, Arshad Warsi, and Jaaved Jaaferi, meanwhile, have displayed the kind of loyalty usually reserved for long-running television characters and have appeared in all four films. Esha Gupta makes a cameo in the latest instalment, while in Dhamaal 4, she mostly appears to be having an extended conversation with her phone.
The first film was inspired by Stanley Kramer’s classic It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), but after that, the franchise has been steadily cruising downhill — with the brakes removed. All four films have been directed by Indra Kumar, and frankly, there has been little evolution in his storytelling style. The comedy remains largely dependent on slapstick, where the audience is expected to burst into laughter at someone getting a knife stuck in the posterior.And if you don’t laugh the first time, don’t worry — the film has faith in repetition.
The verbal comedy tries equally hard. Lines such as “Tu aadmi nahi, pyjama hain, who bhi phata hua” are delivered with great confidence, while the self-referential humour — “Tu Total Dhamaal mein nahi thi na, isliye tujhe nahi maloom” — assumes that audiences have memorised the Dhamaal franchise timeline as carefully as The Godfather saga.
The film opens on the high seas, where pirates of the Arabian (or whichever sea the budget allows) are led by Adhura (Ravi Kishan) in search of hidden treasure on an island. They know very little about the treasure or the island, but fortunately they have a talented map reader (Upendra Limaye), because apparently even pirates need a specialist before starting their treasure hunt.
Guddu (Ajay Devgn) arrives to rescue him, accompanied by his sidekick Jonny (Sanjay Mishra). Then there are Adi (Arshad Warsi) and Manav (Jaaved Jaaferi), with the latter creating marital chaos for the former as Rosy (Sanjeeda Sheikh) remains undecided about whether she wants to stay or leave.
More characters soon enter the madness. Lallan (Riteish Deshmukh) marries Paaro (Anjali Anand), a plus-size young woman, assuming her father is wealthy because he owns a fancy car. The reality? Her father is merely the chauffeur of the man who owns the car. Cue the jokes about her weight, beginning with the scene where she sits on a motorcycle and the vehicle tilts upwards.
The film repeatedly returns to the theme of ‘laalach’ (greed) to justify the treasure hunt. Everyone wants the jewels, regardless of whether their own family jewels end up taking a beating along the way.
To impress the woman he likes, Guddu is forced to go on a bonding holiday with her children. Naturally, everyone eventually converges on the treasure hunt, which continues for so long that one begins to wonder if even the treasure has given up and
gone home.
Much of the adventure relies heavily on CGI, but the spectacle never creates much excitement because the audience has little emotional investment in what happens. It is less a treasure hunt and more a long queue of comic accidents waiting to happen.
The film concludes by revealing another map, politely informing us that the Dhamaal universe has discovered yet another treasure: a reason to make Dhamaal 5.
