A comedy movie has to have a good plot, direction and performance, and above all, improvisational dialogue.
However, Hamshakals, the recent Bollywood comedy directed by Sajid Khan, has overstepped all these basics of a comedy in the art of filmmaking. It is nothing more than a comedy of blunders.
Nothing can be said more about the film after what has been stated above. But then, completing a task of criticism is often an onus for the critic that has to be dealt with.
In the two hours and forty minute long movie, director Sajid Khan takes us to an England where a majority understands and speaks Hindi or Urdu, and where every office is pretty much full of Indians.
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A scene from movie, "Humshakals". – Courtesy Photo |
The film is utterly unsuccessful in exhibiting elements of comedy, drama, glamour, dialogue, direction and performance. Lack of coordination among the characters is unavoidably noticeable. The female cast were only on screen for dance performances or filling the slots in the scene. Bipasha Basu, Tamannaah Bhatia and Esha Gupta were only able to exhibit their bodies along with showing the audience tremendous overacting and over-glamourising.
There is nothing special about the music in the film, while dialogues, which are pretty much the essence of a comedy flick, are clumsy and humourless.
In the beginning of the film, a stage comedian Ashok (Saif Ali Khan) is cracking bad jokes to an audience; while backstage, his friend Kumar (Ritesh Deshmukh) is banging his head on the wall (yes, exactly the way you’ll be banging your head when you are done watching the movie).
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A scene from movie, "Humshakals". – Courtesy Photo |
In the next scene, both are shown arriving at a helipad in a brand new car. It’s here that we come to know of the enormous wealth that Ashok is an heir to. He’s actually a billionaire Londoner with a hobby of cracking jokes.
The helicopter they board lands after a while in a magnificent palace in front of a large number of people in the butlers’ attire. There is magic in this scene as either the hairstylist of the film was on super-stylist mode or the helicopter technology is yet to be known to us, for upon landing, not a single hair could be seen fluttering because of the chopper’s fan.
Ashok then goes to his father’s room and says something emotionlessly and quite hastily, completing the everyday duties of being a son. Two scenes later, Ashok’s seen dancing on a number with his newly netted sweetheart.
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A scene from movie, "Humshakals". – Courtesy Photo |
The story, if it can be called that at all, revolves around Ashok whose father is on deathbed, while his maternal uncle (Ram Kapoor) wants to kick Ashok out of his father’s business and take over everything. For this, our villain administers Ashok and Kumar a drug that turns them into dogs.
Now, they could have had four legs and a wagging tail, but sense prevailed when direction and storyline was being discussed before the project, perhaps, and they only make the two act like dogs. Mama Jee (the maternal uncle) then sends them to a mental facility, which has a look of an asylum from the seventeenth century. What Mama Jee doesn’t know is that in the same hospital, there are two patients who are lookalikes of Ashok and Kumar. The four get mistook for one another, and that’s when the movie supposedly takes the big turn.
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A scene from movie, "Humshakals". – Courtesy Photo |
If loose dialogues can be called comedy, then the movie is soaked to every little scene with comedy, though it can never be termed a movie for the family.
It is quite evident that Sajid Khan could not handle the story. When the dogs looking like humans or the other way around was not the way, and when a lookalike of Hitler in the role of a warden, homosexuals and OCD patients were not enough, too, Sajid Khan resorted to dressing up men like women and, following the trial and error rule, brought in more lookalikes.
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A scene from movie, "Humshakals". – Courtesy Photo |
In Hamshakals, Sajid Khan has done what is beyond far-fetched examples even in light of metaphysics. You see, there’s an evil scientist who prepares a drug that can change the human genes forcing its subjects into becoming dogs! Had Sajid Khan paid tad bit of attention to the science teacher’s lectures in kindergarten, he would not have dared bring such nonsense to his audiences.
That’s not it. The billionaire businessman in the movie does not know who Bill Gates is and calls him the king of computers instead. One cannot comprehend why Prince Charles would be interested in a private firm in the UK and that how does he come to speak Hindi! Then there are the cocaine parathas, which have a chemistry only Sajid Khan can understand, but apparently those who consume them cause havoc instead of dying or falling sick.
The cinematography deserved a better story. It has some standard. Location selection is also well managed. Most of the movie has been shot in London and Mauritius, but sadly, that’s not enough for a movie to be successful.
The performances by Saif, Ritesh, Ram Kapoor and Satish Shah can be termed as pathetic overacting.
By then end of the film, one feels obligated to find the nearest wall and bang it all out of one’s own head.
Read this review in Urdu here.
Direction and story by Sajid Khan; Screeplay by Robin Bhatt and Akarsh Khurana; Produced by Vashu Bhagnani; Cinematography by Ravi Yadav; Music by Himesh Reshammiya and Sandeep Shirodkar.
Starring: Saif Ali Khan, Ritesh Deshmukh, Ram Kapoor, Satish Shah, Tamannaah Bhatia, Bipasha Basu and Esha Gupta.
Hamshakals was released on June 20, 2014.
Translated by Aadarsh Ayaz Laghari