Apr 28, 2003 09:07 PM
5357 Views
(Updated Apr 28, 2003 09:08 PM)
Laughter's the best medicine? Think again............
Laughter is no more a best medicine. Anyone who thinks (read David Dhawan – Govinda combine) that making a funny film is simple ought to take a look at Ek Aur Ek Gyarah for a reality check. Once upon a time David Dhawan made high art out of low comedy, but then came the drought.
EAEG is part of that big drought. No surprises then that the story borrows its premise from Bollywood flicks, Sholay, Karma and some of Dhawan's earlier flicks and tries to valiantly spin it into a slapstick riot. Indians r no longer fools.
Petty charlatans Tara (Govinda) and Sitara (Sanjay Dutt) dream of the big time and discover just how far a wrong deed can take them.
With the police hotfooting after T&S, the two rotten scoundrels decide to leave town. But the movies script (read Subhash Ghai) wills otherwise. They run into fiends Cobra (Ashish Vidyarthi) and Panther (Gulshan Grover) and nix the attempts of the deshdrohis to smuggle hi-tech ammunition out of the country. Well they should have tried to use the same in India only thru LeT & JeM etc.
Next: Fleeing from the cops and trying to save their skin, Tara and Sitara decide to weasel their way into the house of an army officer Ram Singh (Jackie Shroff). The decoys also wend their way into the hearts of the two femmes in the house (Amrita Arora and Nandini Singh).
But, but, but. When men gotta go, they gotta run. So Tara and Sitara scamper off. But their conscience tags along too. Filled with remorse, they return to the army officer's house to make amends. After 18 reels, bad finally turns good.
The problem with EAEG is its poorly structured screenplay by Yunus Sajawal. The first half is bit tolerable with the two lead actors providing the pace but post-interval the film goes completely askew and haywire. You have predictable mix-ups devoid of any element of surprise. What the film lacks in wit, it tries to make up with a rapid-fire onslaught of vulgar jokes, gross-out slapstick and bad puns.
Topping these concerns are a confusing plot and a non-climactic climax. Passing off Film City as the country's border is the giddy limit, watchout, don’t fall down from ur seat!!
Ek Aur Ek Gyarah's narrative isn't fresh or original (since it's a parody, that's probably the point). But it's just not sturdy enough to hold the pieces together. Dialogue writers Bholu Khan and Aman Jaffrey pull out all the stops - no pun is too silly, no gag too obvious. Perhaps that's why the dialogue veers from the sparkling to the utterly vulgar. Shankar Ehsaan Loy's music is nothing to zing home about.
Lead performers Govinda and Sanjay guide this wannabe comedy with an oddball vision and a quirky Punjabi dialect. After aeons, Sanjay Dutt finds his funny bone and turns in a wonderfully off- kilter performance. Govinda, with his special gift for laughs, tosses off the jokes with fleet-footed elan and rapid-fire precision. The duo brings moments of mirth to this lugubrious enterprise. The women, unfortunately, are howlariously bad.
With Subhash Ghai as producer, David Dhawan certainly wanted to make a Goliath of a movie. But somewhere along the way he lost the plot. Ek Davis & Ek Subhash always will make two never gyarah.
