(Starring : Anil Kapoor, Saurabh Sukhla, John Abraham, Pulkit Samrat, Arshad Warsi, Ileana D’Cruz, Urvashi Rautela, Kirti Kharbanda )
When the title of the film declares itself as sheer madness, we cannot expect much from the film. Anees Bazmee, who has earlier directed such potboilers as No Entry, Welcome, Welcome Back, Singh Is King and Ready, has taken the title a trifle too seriously, it seems. What is supposed to be a laugh-a-riot, Pagalpanti turned out to be an incomprehensible and nonsensical farce.
At one point of time, John Abrham’s character Raj declares, “Zarrori nahi hai ki har cheez ka matlab ho”. This perhaps explains best about the story, the treatment, the screenplay, the dialogues and everything that is connected with the film. Made to be a slapstick comedy, there is little coherence about the subject. Cars fly for no reason, songs pop up out of nowhere, and lions come disinterested as the audiences are. The jokes are pedestrian, and the gags have no novelty whatsoever. Of all the actors Arshad Warsi and Saurabh Sukhla shine out in a dull, mindless enterprise. But it is the three heroines of the movie who are the real caricatures of it, who apart from trying to look pretty, and mouth some silly dialogues like “Papa kehte hein kiss karne se main pregnant ho jaungi’ have nothimg else to do or offer. One character fashioned on the fugitive businessman Nirav Modi, with an overwhelming Gujarati accent, acts as a stereotypical cliché.
At over two and a half hours, Pagalpanti is an horrendous experience, which has nothing going right for it from the word go. With Pagalpanti and Marjawan, film-making has gone to a new low. The law of averages has caught up with the Hindi film industry, it seems. Bazmee has seen success in a host of his earlier films, but he must have realised that his time is over. The stink of desperation to give one last try at the box-office can be smelt from outside the theatre. In my terms, the film fails to exploit the potential of what its own title promises. I’m going with only one out of five for Pagalpanti. Avoid it as a must.