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  Manisha Lakhe

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Have Seen a poster lately that makes you wonder why grown up men would want to pose in such a silly manner? Or the one where ageing stars are shown posing with microphones in a manner that looks like a desperate attempt at comedy? Then you probably saw the poster of Chalees Chaurasi.Let's get one thing straight. We like laughing our troubles away at the movies. We love watching clips of funny movi …

Have Seen a poster lately that makes you wonder why grown up men would want to pose in such a silly manner? Or the one where ageing stars are shown posing with microphones in a manner that looks like a desperate attempt at comedy? Then you probably saw the poster of Chalees Chaurasi.Let's get one thing straight. We like laughing our troubles away at the movies. We love watching clips of funny movies like Chupke Chupke (my favorite one if Keshto Mukerji attempting tukbandi whn drunk, and Dharmendra finishing the poem by rhyming 'gulaab' with 'julaab'). We also like sitcoms that have us in splits with their joke a minute set-up and punch lines. And it is not that the jokes are tired or tedious at all. The Simpsons have been entertaining us for over ten years!



Unfortunately, this 4084 (obviously a license plate of a car) reminds one of a road trip that makes you want to say, 'Are we there yet?'The screenwriters (there must be many, because one person could not have produced this disaster all by himself). And yes, this is a story that materialised at a 'guys' rum session where everyone is a king of comedy, and everyone laughs at the jokes too long and too loudly. Please do not get me wrong. I'm all for a night out with friends and joke sessions. But we don't take that joke-when-drunk and turn it into a movie. What the producers need to realise that joke-when-drunk is not funny in daylight (when you are sober). You might get a couple of chuckles here and there (the screenwriters have some use!), but it's a clear invite to ridicule.Okay, so my expectations were very low when I went in to see the movie. One has seen Rascals not too long ago and Bollywood attempts at comedy have been pathetic after Basu Chatterji.



But Naseeruddin Shah is a good actor. So are the other three. Then why are they in a police van mouthing rubbish? Why are they at a bar mutilating a song that was one of our first Pakistani pop imports? Why is there a just-out-of-film-school smartassedness in video introductions of characters? Where is the story? Ohhh! How is it that so much hamming fits into that one police van? Shouldn't they be arrested by acting police? By the time we discover that the four men: Naseeruddin Shah, Ravi Kissen, Atul Kulkarnai and Kay Kay Menon have hijacked the police van to steal cash from a bunch of bad guys, half the audience is nursing a headache because of the shrill background score and the other half has been rendered deaf by the same attempt at 'sounding' comical.

Fortunately, one ten second slow motion shot of Kay Kay Menon stepping out with the others in khaki pants and putting on his Ray Bans a la policemen where he looks so-oh cool (yes, me likes Kay Kay Menon, sue me!) is the total paisa vasool shot. Now you might say that I am pathetic, but please appreciate my optimism here. Am salvaging a sliver of gold among pyrite.Let me elaborate. When Kay Kay Menon let his hair down and danced on a boat in the movie Honeymoon Travels, he plastered a smile on many a face in the audience. That scene remains one of the funnest (pardon the use of such a colloquial yet wholly appropriate word) ever. And that slow-motion shot is the best shot of the movie.The two item number are - and I am not apologising for being stern here - plain bad upbringing and an assumption that having an item number in the movie will sell the movie on music channels, and bring in the chavanni throwers in the single screen theaters. Thankfully the chavanni chhap audience has grown up and is demanding better titillation than 'beedi bani, hukka bani' type fake village belle lyrics.



Ah yes, the story. Alas, it's that drunk joke. About four fake policemen robbing a real police van to look like real policemen when robbing other robbers of cash. The joke is that the other robbers are also dressed as fake policemen. The real policemen know that the four fake policemen are fake and use them to rob other robbers. Confusing? Well, It is. And rather unfunny too, because the director uses the same actors who play the same role in every movie here. The spoofy gun battle at the end is too loud and too long and by the time you realise it is a spoof and meant to be funny, you are exhausted of any chuckles that may have remained at the bottom of your generous heart. Even television shows like The Simpsons have more gags in their half hour slots than this movie does in its long 2 hours...



By the time the movie ends, you do not care who got the suitcases filled with cash. And I don't care if I have given away the ending. I meant to. I do now wish to put you through the same torture of your sense of humor as we did. I am glad to be Col. Jessop from A Few Good Men who is proud to stand guard so the people feel protected. Yes, we reviewers want to protect you from banal, one joke movies such as these.