AN OWN GOAL BY THE MAKERS!. Review on Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal

There are movies that are made with noble intentions and end up delivering the reward for these noble intentions effectively. Then there are movies that are made with noble intentions, but somehow due to the lack of efficiency, end up with poor results. Finally, there are movies that are made with unclear, confused intentions that are always destined to produce POOR results. DHAN DHANA DHAN GOAL is one such movie that falls in the third category…not only is the outcome horrible and a total failure, but the intentions with which the movie was made were equally ridiculous.

Being a football (soccer) player and a great fan of the sport myself, I am proud to represent this beautiful game all the time. And with many other lovers of the game around the globe, it enjoys the greatest popularity among all the sports that exist in the world. While Bollywood realizes that the sport is not all that popular in that part of the world as it is in other areas of the world, no film-maker has the right to make a movie that advertises itself to be based on football, and ends up doing NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING, to promote or represent football. Instead, DHAN DHANA DHAN GOAL is a movie that revolves around the ridiculous, unreal idea of discrimination against the South Asian community in the UK. Huh? That’s the most lenient response that can come from a rational person after watching this movie.

NAMASTEY LONDON earlier this year depicted the same concept of the British community being racist towards South Asians. Being from the United States and having lived in the UK myself, I have great knowledge of how the British people treat visitors from all over the world – they are EXCELLENT hosts. Rather, what I noticed over there was that many prejudiced South Asians had alienated themselves from the locals and were bashing the UK left and right, which makes the South Asian community racist more than anyone else. And NAMASTEY LONDON was clearly a biased movie that did good business thanks only to Akshay’s star power. DHAN DHANA DHAN GOAL is not only more biased, but also has no star to save it from disgrace.

Now that a preview has been given, it is time to summarize the plot. Oh well, there is no plot…except for a bunch of amateurish “footballers” (a shame to call them footballers) who only speak to people from their “own community” (as childish as it gets) and rather than focusing on their football, their main goal is to distinguish “their community” (then why did they come to the UK if they could not respect the great British culture). With such a ridiculous plot, things can only get worse in terms of the screenplay. The trainings shown in the movie are childish at best, with the goalkeeper practicing by receiving throws from his fellow players rather than stopping their shots; to depict the British people as racist, they show a team called Aston that has all white footballers who threw John’s character of their team based on his skin colour…huh?

Is anyone aware of modern day football? In fact, let’s take the example of Manchester United itself, who are shown in the movie…their team has non-white players like Patrice Evra, Carlos Tevez, Louis Saha, Park Ji-Sung, and the list goes on. So how in the world is their colour based discrimination in modern day football? The fact is, the director leaks out the reality…it is the South Asian footballers who have made a team where no other ethnicity is allowed, which makes them racist, not the locals! To make matters worse, the director’s emotions take him over and there is also a point in the story where Arshad Warsi’s character reveals that this (movie) is not about football. If you somehow decide to watch this total failure of a movie (which I don’t recommend), watch out for the interval point, where Arshad’s character points out that the main ambition (of the movie) is to promote the interests of South Asians in the UK, not to focus on the beautiful sport that the movie promised to focus on.

It’s a shame to think the beautiful game was exploited to promote something that is a total lie…racism is a concept that exists everywhere in the world we live in and unfortunately, racists are everywhere. But then again, why just target one country as racist? England is like my country, and I know for sure, that as a country, it is one of the least racist places in the world. John Abraham’s character points out a fantastic thing near the climax, where he tells his father that since he was born in Britain, he cannot be expected to hate the country baselessly the way many South Asians do over there. But later in the movie, John’s character has a change of thought which kills the strength of his character. And oh, these are not the only clichés that show how poorly this movie is made. Watch out at the end where it is announced that South Hall United has won the Championship and 3 millions POUNDS…on the screen, it says $3 Million (laughs)…that reminds me how much the makers know about UK…how can they comment on major topics such as football and racism in the UK when they don’t even know how to write the currency of the nation!

Performances are nothing to comment on…the characterization is so poor that the actors seem powerless…and that all comes down to the director being on the fault. On the whole, this is a movie that was made poorly all the way. My advice would be to stay away from this scam at any cost!