Yamla Pagla Deewana

Cast: Dharmendra,Sunny Deol,Bobby Deol,Kulraj Randhawa,Anupam Kher,Mukul Dev,Himanshu Mallik,Amit Mistry

Director: Samir Karnik

Directed by Samir Karnik, Yamla Pagla Deewana is a frothy and fun-filled movie that will have the audience in splits. It is a film that is all about the Deol trio of Dharmendra, Sunny and Bobby who conjure up a great on-screen camaraderie to dish out a laugh riot. The film is firstly and thankfully not a slapstick though there are hints of spoofy gags. It also relies on the image of the Deols while outlining their characters. For instance, Bobby has been presented mostly as a lover boy while Sunny breaks bones and also mimics the now-famous hand-pump scene from Gadar.

Dharmendra is a delight to watch and will tickle your bones with some of his witty one-liners. The entire film is a comedy of errors with a pretty hotchpotch storyline. Bobby plays Gajodhar and wants to marry Saheba (essayed by newcomer Kulraj Randhawa). But Saheba’s brothers decide to accept Sunny Deol as their potential ‘damaad’. Sunny plays Paramveer who reunites with his lost dad and brother in the first few minutes of the film. Thereafter, the trio indulge in their antics and draw huge guffaws from the audience.

Though the performances are commendable, the music of the film is weak and has got only the title track to boast for. But chuckles are guaranteed with some genuinely hilarious moments. However, had the editing team done a better job, the film could have been much better. Nevertheless, it is a watchable flick if you wanna laugh out loud. If you have had a bad day and want to cheer yourself up, Yamla Pagla Deewana is the best option you have this week. Rather, it is one of the best options you have had in quite some time. And if you have had a good day, it just gets better!

Unashamedly based on a the age old and clichéd Bollywood formula of separation and reunion in families, Yamla Pagla Deewana starts with a recap of some of the famous 70's dramas in the credits. That sets the tone. So you have a Canada-based banker Paramveer Singh Dhillon (Sunny Deol) who finds that his father and brother are still alive and are in Varanasi. He promises his mother to get them back and lands in India. Here he meets them but his father Dharam Singh (Dharmendra) refuses to recognize him. Paramveer decides to stick on till he gets his father to accept him. In the meantime the younger brother Gajodhar Singh (Bobby Deol) falls in love and that takes the three of them to Punjab.

The first half is almost a drag as the director sets the stage for an exciting second half. In fact the story barely moves in the first half, though it is replete with magical moments. Post the intermission the story takes a huge leap in pace while keeping the laughs alive. You have references of the Deol films and also fresh stocks of jokes. For example a young Punjabi girl's desire to settle in 'Caneda' and preparing for it by reading up about the country on the internet! There are also funny statements on how the masses feel anyone speaking in English is right.

The film could have been better if the first half was controlled. A couple of songs could have been easily removed - something evidently kept for one section of the audience. And then the chaotic Priyadarshan style climax could have definitely been done better. The Deol-magic is manifested to the optimum with their trademark characteristics used in the storytelling. So you have Sunny Deol and Dharmendra bashing up goons in Rajnikanth style action while Bobby romancing his girlfriend on music borrowed from Kareeb. The film looks like it has been directed by a hardcore Deol fan as it is filled with everything that the audience loves about the Deols. The good part is that all of these gimmicks actually gel very well into the story and are not just clubbed in for some cheap cheers.

The three Deols are in magical form as they do what they do best. Sunny Deol is very good. Dharmedra looks good at this age. Bobby Deol comes up with one of his best performances as he tries comedy- a genre he has not exploited much. Kulraj Randhawa adds the much required freshness. The rest of the cast bring in their own styles to make the film more entertaining. Amit Mistry deserves special mention.

After a decent start to the year with No One Killed Jessica, this film promises to shoo away the ghosts of last year's dismal box office reports even further. We often try to come up with some phrase to describe a film. Like the promos says that this film has action, romance, emotions, drama and also a lot of confusion! It indeed has a whole lot of elements that Indian cinema has predominantly celebrated- be it family, honesty or love. YPD generates one cheer - Hit hai! Well the team deserves this one, at least director Samir Karnik does! ‘Yamla Pagla Deewana’ is a fulfilled tribute to the spirit of Bollywood which reconfirms that Indian cinema of yore can never be ‘lost’ and it should be ‘found’ periodically to give us a ‘feel good’ feeling in this troubled times.

Producer Director Samir Karnik pays a ‘Deolastic’ tribute to Manmohan Desai, Prakash Mehra - the papas of wholesome entertaining musicals who gave us ‘Amar Akbar Anthony’, ‘Parvarish’, ‘Hera Pheri’, ‘Dharam Veer’, ‘Yaadon Ki Baaraat’ etc. YPD is a crazy fulfilled joyride where happily married Paramveer Singh (Sunny Deol) comes to India from Canada to look for his father, Dharam Singh (Dharmendra) and his brother Gajodhar Singh (Bobby Deol), who were separated from him during childhood.

Paramveer finds them earning their livelihood as con men in the ghats of Benaras. But before he can take them back with him he must resolve his kid brother's complicated love story by tackling the girl's (Kulraj Randhawa) tough brothers (Anupam Kher and co). This leads to joyful ride to sadda Punjab and the result is a total paisa vasool fun. But how a cliché story makes it possible to provide the fireworks every now and then in the 2 hrs 30 minutes time span mostly during the second half.. Simple, Director Samir Karnik does a smart casting act which turns out to be just perfect to satisfy the appetite of entertainment hungry souls of Bollywood cinema. He uses the qualities of the Deols and mixes with their superb chemistry which we did see in ‘Apne’ where everyone gives his best and the trio is thoroughly enjoyable.

Bobby in his mischievous roadside Romeo act is engaging. Big brother Sunny is highly entertaining in this ‘bhaiya’ act where in action he goes beyond his own set benchmark in his biggest hit ‘Gadar – Ek Prem Katha’, the climax where he blows everyone with his trademark yell is howlarious and in the scene when he gets drunk by drinking mugs of whiskey from a bucket can make any stone hearted laugh to the fullest. Having said this, however, the show stealer is undoubtedly the 75 year old Dharampaji who is still ‘garam’ on screen with his entertaining acts. The biggest compliment for Dharmendra is that he doesn’t look like a father on screen he looks like the elder brother of Sunny and Bobby and does an amazing job, his comic timings, dance moves are just fabulous.

The trio has a plenty for their fans over here. B-town new introduction Kulraj Randhawa is attractive, you can’t move your eyes when she is on screen and she has the potential to stay long as an actress. The movie would not have been a joyride without the excellent support of its supporting cast especially Anupam Kher who is outstanding as the egoist NRI obsessed Sardar brother. Johny Lever entertains, Nafisa Ali is up to mark, Sucheta Khanna is fabulous, Amit Mistry is fine, Mukul Dev is fantastic as the drunken jat. Himanshu Malik is fair,

Emma Brown Garrett as Sunny's wife was endearing, people will love the part when she says Hindi especially the line ‘Arre mein loot gayi’. The kids are a delight and Ajay Devgn's voiceover is appropriate. The movie already has two, maybe three chartbusters – the title, “Tinku Jiya” and “Chamki” marking the comeback of Anu Malik. The dialogues are nice and entertaining and the chemistry between the Deols is dazzling. Lens work by Kabir Lal and Binod Pradhan is first rate, editing by Mukesh Thakur is crisp and production values are topnotch. So what’s wrong… Well not much but still the writer should have concentrated more on the chemistry and Samir as the director should have followed the movie in the tone in which Ajay Devgn started his voiceover. First half is a bit laid back as the real action filled with all the masala happens during the second half.

All said and done, ‘Yamla Pagla Deewana’ is fun filled Bollywood road trip that’s shoots all the right targets on its way and will become a winner, the flawless casting, the high entertainment quotient designed for the masses and catchy score will push its prospects at the B.O. Later the emotional connect established with a feel good heart will make it reach to a broader audience. It’s a sure shot winner anywhere where ‘Bollywood is watched, seen or heard.

When was the last time you went to see a movie to watch a real-life film family have fun? Was it 40 years ago in ‘Kal Aaj Aur Kal’ when the Kapoor khandaan, grandfather Prithviraj Kapoor, son Raj and grandson Randhir Kapoor got together to show us how the generation gap can smother a free flow of ideas and emotions within a family? In ‘Yamla Pagla Deewana’ (YPD) where the Deol parivar puts its laughing heads together for a fun fiesta, the problem in the plot is just the opposite of what we saw in ‘Kal Aaj Aur Kal’. The generation gap has disappeared. Son Bobby Deol calls his father Dharmendra ‘Dharam’ in the formal moments and ‘Kamina’ when Bobby-boy is in a particularly affectionate mode of thought. Both father-son go around conning the whole of Varanasi in the first, decidedly more deft and amusing half of this crazy, zany, irreverent ode to a dysfunctional family. Sunny Deol’s NRI character comes searching from Vancouver for a father and brother who are hardly in the mood to be found. Turban in place.

Cleverly, often wittily, written by Jasvinder Singh Bath, YPD is big broad burlesque-styled homage to the spirit of on-screen and off-screen camaraderie. The Deol brothers are in full form and have been cleverly cast to create a somewhat disembodied study in contrasts. Bobby is deliberately loud and hammy, almost like Salman Khan in ‘Dabangg’ without the humour in uniform.

Sunny Deol in a more controlled avatar than the other two Deols does his larger-than-life heroic act with habitual panache. It’s interesting to see how Sunny balances out the guffaws with the fights. His character and the rest of the plot repeatedly hark back to the dhishum-dhishum bak-bak razmatazz of the 1970s when cinema was all about unabashed villain bashing on sets that were supposed to look like sets. Director Samir Karnik who showed his sensitive side in the underrated ‘Heroes’, here muffles the mellow moods in a melee of harangue and one-liners.

Interestingly the lines of morality are delightfully blurred here. Dharmendra the ultimate super-hero of the 1970s is here an unapologetic con-man. One never knows when the he-man transforms into the hee-hee man. All that matters is that Dharmendra seems to be having fun in his sons’ company. The mood of mischievous gaiety is contagious even in the second comparatively less engaging half when the entire cast moves to rural Punjab where Bobby woos the comely Kulraj Randhawa and wins over her zanily autocratic father(Anupam Kher, in full farcical form) and his battalion of goofily macho patriarchs. For better or worse all films about marriage and courtship in a Punjabi milieu always reminds us of Imtiaz Ali’s ‘Jab We Met’.

But hey, did Imtiaz’s film have Dharmendra’s first-born creating a ruckus after drinking whiskey out of a bucket? Nahin na? There are in-house Deol jokes and references to Dharmendra neo-classics ‘Sholay’, ‘Dharam-veer’, ‘Phool Aur Patthar’ and ‘Pratiggya’, all adding up to a rather heartwarming tribute to the Deols. The spirit of tongue-in-cheek irreverence dominates the proceedings. The film has a rough-at-the-edges feel to it, perhaps deliberately to accentuate the rugged humour. By the time we come to the crazy climax in the godown in the second-half, someone comments, ‘This looks like a cheap godown set from a tacky Hindi movie.’ And we get the point of this scrambled crazy-as-can-be exercise in subversive laughter. Director Samir Karnik loves the Deols. The Deols love one another. And we love watching a diehard Deol fan of a director bring Bollywood’s family together in a comedy that keeps us smiling till the last breathless moment of hilarious havoc. Yes we love this film’s anything-goes mood. There are some delectable cameos. Watch out for Sucheta Dalaal as a spaced-out Canadian-and-sex-starved spinster and Amit Mistry as a not-so-cool Punjabi dude. They get the point.