The combination of an over-the-hill Govinda, over-the-top Javed Jaffrey, stiff-as-a-stick Mahakshay Chakraborty and a decidedly deadpan Suniel Shetty isn’t the one to leave you rolling on the floor with uncontrollable laughter. For one, Govinda’s heydays of comedy are long over and Suniel Shetty hardly ever displayed a funny bone when not cast along with Akshay Kumar. That leaves us with Javed Jaffrey whose comedy has always leaned on phoohad histrionics from the start, and Mimoh is an actor whose sight could make a laughing man sad. So what in goodness name were director Rajnish Raj Thakur and producer Sunil Shetty thinking when they decided to rip-off the Hollywood crime comedy Crime Spree to come up with its monstrous desi version Loot? May be ‘thinking’ is not the right word.
But for those who care to know, here’s what Loot is about. Four chors (played by the aforementioned actors) set off for Pattaya in Bangkok too pull off the robbery of their lives. But instead the nitwits end up looting a wrong place. No bumper prizes for guessing that the place belongs to a dreaded don (Mahesh Manjrekar), who can’t take the slight to his ego, and bays for the blood of the quartet who robbed him.
Throw in a bunch of bumbling goons, buffoons and ganglords and add some oomph with cameos and items by the likes of Kim Sharma, Shweta Bhardwaj and Rakhi Sawant and you have a film trying everything to keep you entertained without ever succeeding to.
Firstly, the jokes are replete with double entendres so crass and cheap as to leave the family folks shivering with embarrassment. There are dialogues insinuating obscenities like “guard ko maaro” or “andar daal”. The gibberish between Govinda and Javed Jaffrey isn’t funny, but Mimoh trying to pass himself off as a ladies’ man sure is.
The screenplay is a mess of the most unfortunate kind. Gangsters keep springing up frame after frame and the buffoonery goes unchecked until a semi-dressed Rakhi Sawant comes in shaking her booty to “Jawani Ki Bank Look Le”. At that point you wanna throw your boot at Loot and back it up with an expletive that rhymes with the film’s title.
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