Kamaal Dhamaal Malamaal

Kamaal Dhamaal Malamaal

Distressing because a stellar amount of talent - Om Puri, Paresh Rawal, Nana Patekar - is wasted in an insipid comedy.

Disappointing because one goes expecting a fun time out but after two hours into the movie expecting, some twists or laughs from the story, one is actually dying to get out of the theatre.

A questions begs to be asked : Did Priyadarshan outsource the direction of this movie to a newbie out of 'film school'? Is the man who actually extracted some comic timing out of Akshay Kumar and Sunil Shetty (Hera Pheri) losing his touch?

To be fair there is a story somewhere. However, when the first half of the story (almost two hours) is mostly committed to convincing us that Shreyas Talpade's character is lazy, cowardly, unemployed AND chased by his love interest's brothers, subsequently and successfully caught and beaten up by them, one wonders WHY IS THIS SWEET GIRL FROM A RICH HOUSEHOLD INTERESTED ENOUGH TO EVEN THROW THIS FELLOW A GLANCE LET ALONE ELOPE?????? The love angle appears completely unconvincing and the two prancing around the river bank looks like a really low budget 'romance' movie trying really hard.

The onus of delivering on the comedy front falls almost entirely on Shreyas Talpade unless of course Nana Patekar's monosyllables and strangely huge appetite and meal plans are considered funny or people falling into one of the hundred pits dug by Nana Patekar is funny. To Talpade's credit, one does not feel like bludgeoning him for hamming - there is talent somewhere.

Did the director try too hard or just not enough? That a good comedy does not need a sexy, expensively attired star cast, item numbers, foreign locations, forced situations has been proven by Priyadarshan. All he had to do was take his talented cast and keep the storytelling slick.

The songs were unnecessary, the 'twist' comes in too late when one has lost all interest in the movie and one wonders what happened to three hours of one's life.

The decision to see the movie is entirely yours. No opinion is volunteered out of respect for the three stalwarts mentioned at the start of this review.