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2.0 out of 5 stars
"That's no parrot! Someone fooled you!", June 22, 2007
This review is from: Awara Paagal Deewana (DVD)
Well, talk about a crudfest, this one's it. AWARA PAAGAL DEEWANA may tout itself as an action comedy picture but, really, the lame comedy cripples the action aspects of the film. Bollywood has a tendency to steal straight out from Hollywood motion pictures, and this film's no different as it borrows mainly and heavily from the excellent
The Whole Nine Yards.
One afternoon, an Indian underworld don suffers a stroke. Before passing away, he writes a will leaving 10 billion in diamonds to three people: his adopted daughter Preeti (Preeti Jhangiani), gangster Guru Gulab Khatri (Akshay Kumar), who happens to be Preeti's indifferent hubbie, and the don's son Vikrant (the virulent Rahul Dev), also a gangster. Vikrant, being a greedy psycho, concocts a scheme to keep the fortune solely for himself. He frames Guru for the public assassination of India's Home Minister (in a blatant, almost frame by frame ripoff of the lobby shootout scene from THE MATRIX), resulting in Guru fleeing the country. Vikrant promptly offers a reward for his whereabouts. Guru ends up moving into a house in New York and meets his neighbor Anmol (Aaftab Shivdasani), a meek dentist being ridden roughshod by his domineering wife. It doesn't take long for Anmol to smoke out Guru's identity and he tells his wife, who sends him packing to India to tattletale to Vikrant and earn the reward money. In India, Anmol rapidly falls in love with Guru's wife Preeti. This, of course, really complicates matters...
The film begins and ends with nutty action sequences. Within the first 10 minutes, we're treated to a cheesy and ludicrous fight scene as Akshay's character of Guru pits his shoddy Bolly-fu against Chinese martial artists seemingly on a smoke break from the set of CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON. Lots of hokey wirework here and a girl's disembodied voice intermittently reminding the audience that "He's dangerous" (meaning Guru). The good news is that the high flying, arse kicking sequences toward the end improve on this crappy action opener.
The film's middle portions are significantly more concerned with comedic moments, which, sad to say, aren't very funny. AWARA PAAGAL DEEWANA tries to hedge its bet by introducing Manilal (Paresh Rawal) who is this film's predominant go-to fount of humor. Manilal lives in the same house as the dentist Anmol and is Anmol's father-in-law. He is equally henpecked and has trouble remembering people's names. Paresh Rawal received several awards for his performance here, so enough people must've liked it. I guess it's one of those things where he must come across as hilarious in his native tongue, because, frankly, as someone who has to watch Bollywood films with English sub-titles, I don't get it. The film's bid for levity further involves characters who either stutter (Johnny Lever) or who can't recall the names of everyday objects (a disappointing Sunil Shetty). However, I do like the running joke in which Guru keeps asking people to have coffee with him and is rebuffed instantly every time (Guru had garnered a reputation for dispatching his victims while drinking his coffee).
The acting is subpar. Akshay Kumar has been in better films (
Namastey London DVD, for one) and has turned in better performances. Here, he's going thru the motions. Rahul Dev as main baddie Vikrant glares like someone just farted and clenches his jaw muscles like he's repressing a fart, which to him, I'm guessing, is the height of acting. Although, to give credit where it's due, being a master of disguise, Vikrant does come up with a nifty ploy in New York.
Next to the chemistry between Willis and Perry, the best thing about THE WHOLE NINE YARDS was Amanda Peet's breath-of-fresh-air turn as the mob-fixated dental assistant. Aarti Chhabria in the same role doesn't hold a candle to Peet as she blends in quite easily with the other female actors, which isn't a compliment, because all the women here just aren't very good. Then there's Aaftab Shivdasani, who is Matthew Perry's counterpart. Shivdasani is simply excruciating to watch as he instills the same level of wimpiness into his part but minus Perry's saving charm. Now, I just finished lambasting Paresh Rawal for being unfunny, but he may actually be the best actor in this film, although that says more about the low quality of acting here than about his personal emoting skills.
AWARA PAAGAL DEEWANA collapses under the blatant plagiarism, the mess of a plot, the acting deficiencies, the leaden humor, and the overall cheesiness of it all. On top of everything, the songs are dull. In viewing a film where even the NYPD tend to speak English with Hindi accents, it's hard to be objective. And I'm not sure I managed it. I'm giving this thing one and a half stars, the half a star for what turns out to be pretty action stunts at the end of the film. But, to get a further sense of the film's inane tone, check out this ludicrous chain of statements: In New York, Vikrant: "We must finish Guru Gulab Khatri. Where will we find him?" Hired thug Yeda Annar: "There's this Indo-American charity dinner today. He's performing there." And, of course, he is.
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