Review: 'De Dana Dan' might give you a headache

Film: De Dana Dan
Director: Priyadarshan
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Sunil Shetty, Katrina Kaif, Paresh Rawal, Neha Dhupia, Sameera Reddy, Archana Puran Singh, Johnny Lever,  Shakti Kapoor, Rajpal Yadav
Rating: * ½

De Dana Dan will almost certainly end up giving you a headache. Unless you revel in comedy where every character shrieks and screams, women are spoken of in a degrading manner and loud decibel levels give you a kick, this one’s not for you. Not that the film does not have its moments. But when in a 2 hours, 45 minutes movie you barely chuckle a couple of times and laugh out loud once, there’s reason to worry.

So you know some facts already. Priyadarshan teams up with the trio of that cult hit, Hera Pheri – Akshay Kumar, Sunil Shetty and Paresh Rawal – and adds about 20-odd other actors to the fray. To say the film is a follow up to Hera Pheri or even in the same league would be blasphemous. While HP relied on a script, situations and real characters stuck in unreal circumstances, this one’s USP includes dialogues like kutti ki pilli, bawling actors and a confused plot. If you are among those who can sleep peacefully in a theatre, the noise levels in De Dana Dan won’t even let you do that.

The story isn’t much different from Hera Pheri to begin with. Nitin (Akshay Kumar) and Ram (Sunil Shetty) need money because that’s the only way they can marry their rich girlfriends (Katrina Kaif and Sameera Reddy). They hatch a plot to kidnap Nitin’s owner’s beloved dog and ask for a ransom of a crore rupees. The plan goes awry and the owner (Archana Puran Singh) and the cops think that it’s actually Nitin who has been kidnapped. In the meanwhile, Nitin and Ram hide in a five-star hotel (even though they are shown to be penniless!).

At the same hotel are relatives of two businessmen (Paresh Rawal and Manoj Joshi), whose respective son and daughter are to be wed. There’s also a hit man (Johnny Lever), hired to kill a rich man with a roving eye (who else, but Shakti Kapoor). Among other ‘fools’ in the hotel are an Indian ‘ambassador', played by Vikram Gokhale (Om Puri must have had date issues), a bumbling waiter (Rajpal Yadav repeating his Do Knot Disturb act), a harrowed investigation officer (Sharat Saxena) and a man (Tinnu Anand) looking for his daughter who’s left him to be with her boyfriend.

What ensues is the typical confusion, some pointless sequences replete with double meaning dialogues and a mind-numbing climax where the hotel suffers from a Titanic-like situation, and you just suffer.

The cast, stuffed with comedians, range from the average to irritatingly bad. Sunil Shetty is a tad better than when he started out in the genre a decade back with Hera Pheri, while Paresh Rawal hams like there is no tomorrow. In fact Rawal, along with Joshi, shouts his way through the film as if that’s the only way they know to make people laugh.

The one who gets the best lines and does full justice to them too is the back-in-form Johnny Lever. After All The Best, this is the second film where Lever delivers a truly hilarious performance after a long time. Neha Dhupia, as an opportunist looking for rich men, does well too.

Akshay Kumar does a repeat act of most of his recent films and that’s what dilutes the impact of his performance, even though he has his moments. Kumar needs to reinvent himself, and do it fast, or he may soon go the Govinda-way. So must Priyadarshan. Although he keeps balancing his insane comedies with sensitive films like Kanchivaram, De Dana Dan is a new low for comedy as a whole.

The audience may have been kind to the actor-director duo in the past, but with De Dana Dan they seem to be taking viewers for a ride. Now, that kind of Hera Pheri is unacceptable.