What is it all about?
Wow.. UTV teams up with Raj Kumar Gupta (Aamir, No One Killed Jessica) along with Emraan Hashmi and Vidya Balan (Dirty Picture) to tickle our funny bones by tickling at the con comedy zone... But Ain.. Mr Gupta in his paradigm shift from stirring souls to con jhols goes wrong in convincing and conveying this chakkar that was designed to make you go Wow! instead provokes a great big Huh? (read Ain)..
The Story
The writers Raj Kumar Gupta and Parveez Sheikh plan this heist with a bhol bhulaiya twist where Sanju (Emraan Hashmi) a lootera (read thief) teams up with two weirdo robsters where one of them Idris (Namit Das) is more crazy over raw brinjals then fresh lobsters and loves to play doctor doctor with his telephone kumari (read friend) while the other Pandit (Rajesh Sharma) is always found dressed in safari.. They do a great bank robbery which turns out to be a great bollywood tribute to Holywood's Kathryn Bigelow's `Point Break'.. but wait as everything goes accordingly Sanju gets the responsibility of hiding the money for three months because he is married and stays with his wife Neetu (Vidya Balan) who suffers from fashion phobia and loves to wear anything in `vogue' be it designed for a lady in Ethiopia or Indonesia... when the time to split the booty Sanju claims of memory loss and.. and.. and..
What to look out for?
Gupta starts extremely well.. the bank robbery is hilarious and gem of a moment. The passenger with vegetables, the doctor doctor on phone, the road side baba, Vidya Balan's craze for latest fashion are all sheer fun... First half manages to paste a constant smile on the audience face and kudos to Gupta and Parveez for this accomplishment..
Its certainly not at all easy to make the audience happily interested with smiles in such genre where crime and humour are on a date..
Coming to performances Emraan Hashmi is excellent. This is not his comfort zone but he excels. The trauma, anguish, disbelief Emraan does it with finesse. Brilliant.
Vidya Balan.. well first of all she deserves a pat for agreeing to play a non protagonist and the wonder is even after not playing the central character Vidya shines in this Punjabi housewife `avatar' which is hilarious, funny, and entertaining, her lingo is spot on with and without those polka dots.. Vidya gives a meaty `weighty' performance. Excellent.
Rajesh Sharma is superb as ever. Namit Das is very good. Parvin Dabas is okay.
Amit Trivedi music is in flavor. Satyajit Pande does a fine job with his lenses. Aarti Bajaj's editing is fine. Rick Roy's costumes do justice to the characters. Production values are up to mark.
What not
After a very promising first half Gupta suddenly post interval suffers from identity crisis's and almost murders the movie's identity.. the script written jointly by himself and Parveez fails to find any wings for a cinematic high neither it winks for a possible layer or a statement.. the balance of comedy and crime is lost and we are taken to a whodunit zone and even there also the writer director miss the golden rule - they fool you but doesn,t care to give you a reason that you have been fooled.
Post interval the tedious and monotonous forgetting episodes force the audience to lose interest and they don,t care whether Emraan is finding his memory or losing it again.. such movies need an out of the blue never thought of wind up but alas its ends up as a disappointment.
Ghanchakkar problems doesn,t end over here.. blame it on the not so exciting climax.. the background, star status and previous critical and box office acclaim of Emraan, Vidya and Rajkumar Gupta threatens to go against the film.. a lesser known/acclaimed actors directors would have being forgiven for the blunders..
Conclusion: 'Ghanchakkar' - Raj Kumar Gupta's paradigm shift from stirring souls to con jhols starts well but suddenly loses its way and forgets to recover. The brilliant performance by Emraan, Vidya and the supporting cast and the first half is the only saving grace.. the movie which was designed to make the audience laugh at its will after a while commits a crime of letting the audience have their last laugh by the end...
Rating **
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