When a man has given his best and has touched the epitome of his creative potential in a film that is counted among his best works, it becomes difficult for him to live up to high expectations and surpass his own work in his subsequent ventures. This is what seems to be happening with Priyadarshan.
His Hera Pheri was a superbly made comedy and undoubtedly his best work. But his next movie Hungama and now his Hulchul are like testimonies to the elusive fact that his natural flair for making comedies is on the wane.
Two
warring families straddle the story of this movie that is set in a background providing a good range of contrast from a feudal setting in a village to a college campus.
On one hand is the family of authoritarian Angaarchand and his four sons who are vowed to the book of misogyny and live by the code of celibacy. On the other is the family of scheming Lakshmidevi and her three sons and a grand daughter.
What starts off as a game of revenge between the two families leads to the sowing of the first seed of love that shakes the very root of the rigid ideologies the two families have been living by.
Hulchul is in part entertaining and irritating. It is not exactly a comedy but a drama driven by comic situations and characters who now and then invoke laughter by their idiosyncrasies. Many times in the movie rationality is thrown to the winds just for the sake of humor that somehow makes you laugh superficially despite some good performances by the cast, particularly by Arshad Warsi, Paresh Rawal and Akshaye Khanna.
Jackie Shroff looks stiff while Arbaaz is bland. Amrish Puri is excellent while Sunil Shetty still continues to be a hapless victim of both over and under acting.
All in all, ‘Hulchul’ will appeal you if you have a taste for slapstick humor and some family drama. But if nothing less than subtlety suits your palate, then you will end up getting irritated.
Shahrukh Khan’s daughter reprimands him for smoking!
