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Golmaal
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'Golmaal' A well-rounded entertainer

By Nikhil Kumar
Film critic, ApunKaChoice.Com

Rohit Shetty’s movie ‘Golmaal’ lives up to its punchline – Fun Unlimited.

Despite the absence of a concrete plot, the movie entertains because the gags and pranks keep flowing in quick succession. There is hardly any sequence in the film that doesn’t evoke a chuckle, if not make you laugh. And the credit for this partly goes to Neeraj Vora , the writer. Once again, Vora spins a yarn replete with funny oneliners, silly situations, outlandish characters and hare-brained villains.

At

the centre of the movie’s story are four friends – Gopal (Ajay Devgan), Madhav (Arshad Warsi), Laxman (Sharman Joshi) and Lucky (Tusshar Kapoor). Gopal is the brave, big bully of the four. Madhav is the idler. Laxman is the timid one, while Lucky is the bumbling mute.

Idling away, fooling other people, playing pranks and doing crazy stunts are the pastime of the four friends. It is this notoriety that eventually gets the quartet thrown out of their college.

Look out for the sequence when the college dean (Manoj Joshi) rusticates the four after a fiery, but hilarious, outburst.

With nowhere to go – and with a moneylender on their trail – the four friends decide to hide in the bungalow of an old, blind couple (played by Paresh Rawal and Sushmita Mukherjee).

The old couple’s grandson lives in America. The four friends enter the bungalow. Laxman, the cowardly one, hesitatingly agrees to pretend as their grandson, Sammir. Gopal becomes Sammir’s voice. While muteness comes naturally to Lucky, Madhav (the wittiest one) has to undergo the torture of keeping tongue-tied.

To their pleasant surprise, the four friends find a beautiful girl, Nirali (Rimi Sen), living next door. Without any exception, all four fall for her. They adopt the wackiest and wickedest ways to woo her.

Inside the bungalow, the foursome find it increasingly difficult to keep the farce going. Their college dean visits the bungalow, and Gopal and Madhav have to impersonate as the blind couple. Here, the movie takes a tongue-in-cheek potshot at Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s movie Black , with Arshad spoofing the blind Rani. The background score from ‘Black’ adds to hilarity, and Arshad puts the extra punch with his rather crass oneliner “Yeh kya hum log black black khel rahe hain.”

Meanwhile, a local goon sends his henchmen to the bungalow to find a hidden treasure chest. Like his recently released film Phir Hera Pheri , here too Neeraj Vora adds the angle of ‘race for the diamonds’.

The best thing about ‘Golmaal’ is that it doesn’t carry the pretension of a roller-coaster entertainer. Without lingering too much on any one sequence, the movie’s plot breezes from one situation to another, with light-hearted humour creating the base and witty puns filling the edgeways.

Comedy is not something one would expect from Ajay Devgan. But the actor manages to maintain an easy and cheerful demeanor throughout the film. Arshad Warsi provides the most hilarious moments. His comic timing, his dialogue delivery, the tone in his voice and his facial expressions all blend together in a unified way to create the desired impact.

Sharman Joshi ends up looking the most lovable of the four. There is a natural charm in him, which shows in every single scene he enacts. Tusshar Kapoor, too, is likeable, particularly when he bumbles absolute gibberish.

Rimi Sen plays a cardboard character, the mandatory heroine for the heroes.

Paresh Rawal relegates himself admirably against the jamboree of the four pranksters. Sushmita Mukerhjee is a delight to watch.

All in all, ‘Golmaal’ turns out to be a well-rounded entertainer, with an illogical plot and funny characters enacted convincingly by the actors. The film has a delectable dose of slapstick and wit.

Full Timepass.

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