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Saturday, April 1, 2023
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BOLLYWOOD DE DANA DAN
EDITOR'S PICK
Rating: *
In our school days we were taught nonsense rhymes that were incoherent, jumbled
words strung together trendily. "De Dana Dan" is a 150-minute-long
nonsense rhyme.
Its power to mock every rule of sensible and intelligent filmmaking simply
infuriates and exasperates you to a point of complete breakdown of communication
between cinema and art.
The characters are fairly funny to begin with. Akshay Kumar as Archana Puran
Singh`s slave-cum-driver is the portrait of anguished hilarity. He brings to his
part of the servile toy-boy a kind of facile fury that flaunts an easygoing
sense of self-deprecating comedy.
Suniel Shetty as Akshay`s partner in the nonsense rhyme scheme seems to enjoy
the comicality initially...At least he`s relaxed until the frames begin to fill
up with more characters than Noah`s Ark and the spaceship invented to save
mankind in Roland Emmerich`s "2012" combined.
There are more characters romping in confusion in "De Dena Dan" than
in any of Priyadarshan`s over-crowded comedies. Two marriageable women (Katrina
Kaif and Sameera Redddy) with secret lovers, their harassed fathers, Tinu Anand
and Manoj Joshi, an avaricious father-in-law-to-be (Paresh Rawal) and his son
(Chunky Pandey), a tart (Neha Dhupia) willing to sleep with anyone who pays. And
that includes poor Vikram Gokhale who looks out of place in the boisterous
goings-on.
"De Dana Dan" is like a jabbering juggernaut hurling with its
fast-talking, constantly-moving army of characters into a region of utter chaos.
The screenplay throws forward a gaggle of incoherent gags, which suggest that
the melee of characters are more distressed by their financial than emotional
condition in life.
Soon we, the audience, cease to figure out what the characters are up to or how
they are inter-related, if at all.
Just go with the flow. At times, literally because at the climax we have the
characters swimming and spluttering in a flood of water let loose from a bombed
terrace tank in a luxury hotel.
Who planted the bomb? Is it the funny hitman Johnny Lever? Or the funnier
assassin Asrani roaming around the hotel trying to hardsell a corpse in a
coffin?
All this, mind it, is supposed to be the summit of hilarity. The jokes depend
almost entirely on the actors` ability to say the atrocious lines as though they
mean it. Some like Akshay Kumar and Paresh Rawal succeed. Others don`t.
At the end of the day, this comedy of incredible mistaken identities and
monstrous errors of judgement coaches us on the meaning of
`slapstick`...literally. Everyone slaps the person closest to him or her
regardless of the reason or the repercussion.
Zany or just plain witless? You decide.
If this is the present and future of mainstream Hindi entertainment then we need
to do some serious thinking on the way a coterie of super-successful directors
and actors have redefined entertainment to a state of utter inanity.
"De Dana Dan" is not a film. It`s a series of skits strung together to
convey a sense of baggy fun and frivolous entertainment.
Two broke best friends + their such girl friends desperate to marry them + the girls respective their fathers desperate to marry them off else where + a bankrupt businessman who`s getting his useless son engaged to every heirree in town to pay off his debts+ assorted characters like a Chinese Don, a hired assassin, a rich bitch, an ACB officer, a club dancer, an ambassador, a young frusated wife, a letch, a drunken waiter, a dead body nobody wants and above all ..... Moolchandji- the most pampered dog in the world... enjoy their antics in De Dana Dana... Throw in a kidnapping, mistaken identities and mistaken room numbers; an assassin on the prowl, a wedding... relish the mayhem in De Dana Dana.... Multiple stars.... Multiple madness... Multiple laughes....only in De Dana Dana...
