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Thursday, April 25, 2024
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BOLLYWOOD ONE TWO THREE
EDITOR'S PICK
Rating:**
This guy comes into the comedy quite early to serve Sameera Reddy, a car showroom owner, a notice. He smiles and delivers his murderous missive, turns around, frowns and vanishes.
The thing about Ashwini Dheer`s flaky but funny farce is that it has accomplished comic actors in the smallest of parts. Watch out for the seasoned Marathi actress who plays Tusshar`s mother. All she wishes for her son is that he excels in his work, namely killing people.
She sends him off on his first contract-killing mission in Pondicherry (where most of the knock-kneed, but never hackneyed action unfolds). Tusshar ends up at the doorstep of the wrong person - a loud Tamilian scrambled-brained lingerie designer. Esha Deol is cute and loud as the designer.
Lingerie, or kachcha-banyan, as Paresh Rawal insists on calling them plays a big part in covering up the broadly exposed bases in this situational comedies, where the best moments are those that actors take over from the screenwriter and make their own.
Mukesh Tiwari displays an unusual penchant for parody (forget the unfunny Buddha Mar Gaya) adding an extra s to every English word, is like Rakhi Sawant gone wrong. Tiwari`s sidekicks have their own subplots. One of them makes bombs that never go off on time.
Luckily, 123 gets its timing right most of the time. It`s a war of nerves between the writer and audience, as the one tries to outpace the other. Eventually, the audience does get tired of watching three guys with the same name, Laxmi Narayan, getting mixed up in situations where spoken words give nothing, and yet everything away.
But our fatigue is slackened by the unslackened physical energy that the characters bring to the minutest of moments. Ashwini Dheer comes from the television sitcom culture.
Nowhere does his framing or shots give away his cramped antecedents. He enjoys the large open spaces that his crowded cast populates with parodic panache, pouncing on the preposterousness in the plot with famished energy.
The cast is uniformly in sync with the director`s vision, not allowing the shards of farce to be frittered away unused. The smallest of cast member knows the job on hand.
But Suniel Shetty gets as far away from his macho image as humanly possible as the timid and punctual Laxmi Narayan on the run with a reined-in enthusiasm. We`ve seen Suniel do comedy the before. But he was never so straight-faced and sharp. He is a surprise.
Tusshar Kapoor as Mama`s pet out to make his first kill is extremely accomplished. He labours over the loud comedy and gets the volume right. Paresh Rawal is selling lingerie with uninhibited pride and is not the outright winner as he usually is in these comedies.
Has Paresh become complacent? Or have Suniel, Tusshar and company got better at the funny stuff? If only director Dheer had avoided the excessive crudity especially in Suniel`s prolonged sequence in the public loo with the cheesy hit man.
Main nahin pukdunga, he protests in panic as the other actor (another small-time scene stealer in this festival of interesting actors) reaches inside his pants. Panic-attacks dominate lives of these flustered characters.
These lovable losers try to sell lingerie and cars, while the director repackages the Shakespearean comedy of errors in a new autopilot manoeuvre that doesn`t quite have you holding your sides. But chuckles don`t stop.
The shortest role in the history of the comic farce goes to Upen Patel and Tanissha. They come in with a song and go out with a bang. In-between, they lose their grip over the giggle trip.
Director Ashwin Dheer quits while he`s ahead.
Diamonds worth ten crores are stolen from dangerous Don, Pap. The diamonds accidentally fall in the hands of young love birds - Chandu (Upen Patel) and Chandni (Tanisha), Who quickly hide them in a car. Papa and his idiotic henchmen Alberts (Vrijesh Hirjee) and Pintos (Monoj Panval) are desperately hunting for the diamonds while hot headed police officer Mayavati Chautala (Neetu Chandra) is on the prowl looking for offenders of any kind.
Enter the first Laxmi Narayan (Tusshar Kapoor). He`s from a Khandani mafia family and his mother prays that with a few murders under his belt, he will be settled for life. After botching up badly in his early attempts, he`s got a final chance to redeem himself as a Bhal. He comes to Hotel Blue Diamond, Pondicherry because he`s taken supari to bump of Papa (Mukesh Tiwari).
Enter the second Laxmi Narayan (Suniel Shetty). He`s an MBA from Darjeeling and lives his professional life by following two simple rules - 1) The boss is always right. 2) if the boss is wrong, follow rule number 1. He is sent to Hotel Blue Diamond, Pondicherry to collect a new car for his boss from Laila (Sameera Reddy).
The third Laxmi Narayan (Paresh Rawal) is a hawker who has made so much money selling underwear on the footpath, that he has set up a lingerie factory for his son. His son sends him to collect lingerie samples from upcoming designer Jiya (Esha Deol)
One...2....Three...Laxmi Narayans in the same place at the same time.
One....2...Three... Laxmi Narayans waiting for messages at the hotel reception desk.
One...2...Three... Laxmi Narayans getting letters and photographs meant for the other.
First Laxmi Narayan gets lingerie designer Jiya`s photo and goes to kill her.
Onlv to end UD as her hero
Second Lamxi Narayan gets Papa`s photo and goes to collect the car from him,
only to be mistaken for a killer and gets beaten black and blue.
Third Laxmi Narayan gets Laila`s photo and asks her to show him her underwear,
only to be branded an old pervert.
Meanwhile Chandu and Chandni are determined to stop anybody from buying the
car where they have hidden the diamonds.
But Laila has to sell the car to save her showroom.
And Jiya has to sell her design to save herself from lecherous Mende`s clutches.
One...2...Three - A case of not one mistaken identity but three!
One...2....Three - A crazy bunch of people doing the wrong things for the right reason!
One...2...Three - A laugh riot from beginning to end!!
