David Dhawan’s Amitabh-Aishwarya-Sanjay Dutt-Ajay Devgn’s Hum Kissi Se Kam Nahin Clocks 22 Years
A four-star film with no-star value. That just about sums up David Dhawan’s corny and convoluted claptrap. In Hum Kissise Kam Nahin, Dhawan hits the rock bottom of inspiration. The film, if it can politely be called that, seems to have been directed while Dhawan was asleep— by him or one of his assistants, take your pick.
Adapting Harold Ramis’ amusing comedy Analyze This about the relationship that grows between a gangster and his psychiatrist. Dhawan goes berserk with the source material. The shrink expands into an all-purpose doctor who treats everything from diabetes to heartache. Amitabh Bachchan, in his first full-fledged comic role, in this millennium grapples with his malformed doctor’s part.
Alas, it’s a losing battle. Even an actor as intelligent as Bachchan cannot combat congenital corniness. Hum Kissi …is one of the silliest films we’ve seen in a long time. The humour is humid and the laughter waylaid by the ceaseless tumble of stupidity.
Dhawan thinks a blood-thirsty underworld don Munna (Sanjay Dutt) turning into a love-smitten lamb on coming in contact with a stunning beauty Komal(Aishwarya Rai) is funny. The situational comedy would have been amusing were it not so messily mounted and tackily told.
Dhawan seems to have exhausted all his financial resources in getting the awesome foursome together. The film lacks production value to support the stars in their nerve-wracking antics. More than half of the convulsive corniness is set in a hotel in Malaysia where Dr Rastogi (Bachchan), his sister Komal—yes Bachchan Saab and his future daughter-in-law play siblings!!!–her lover-boy Raja (Ajay Devgan) and Munna converge for a dose of heavyduty gallivanting.
Tragically Dhawan seems to have forgotten to take a script writer along for the ostensible jouryride. The jokey jaunt becomes a tedious trek into brainless humour. Dhawan doesn’t seem to have seen the original film. A viewing of Analyze This would have revealed the secret of productive laughter to this rapidly degenerating humour director. Genuine laugher isn’t about making glamorous good-looking stars pose in hotel lobbies and over-elaborate sets. It’s about the chemistry between actors. Only Amitabh Bachchan and Sanjay Dutt as the shrink and gangster seem to belong in the same, insane world.
Aishwarya Rai and Ajay Devgan (who plays her love interest) look far removed from each other in every sense. The couple seems to have just landed from Planet Mars on Planet Farce. They seem to have little empathy for each other, or for the comic genre.
Bachchan and Dutt seem to enjoy each other’s company. Dhawan milks the high-profile duo’s box office and comic potential dry. Irrelevant out-of-character scenes, such as the one where the nervous and confused shrink turns into a snarling and singing Rambo, are added to the brackish brew.
The burlesque becomes unbearably oppressive and long-handed. The basic tackiness and all-pervasive stupidity of the presentation are shocking. In a sequence in a hospital a sign-board on a wall mis-spells‘neurology’. Later, in the same hospital while the all-purpose Dr Rastogi operates his sister for a gun wound her two besotted suitors fight it out outside their lady love’s room and stumble into her room inches way from her inert wounded figure.
Even the pasha of escapism Manmohan Desai would have baulked at this one. One can excuse huge stars like Dutt, Devgan and Rai for sleep-walking through what’s essentially an all-expenses paid holiday on Malaysia. But it’s embarrassing to see Mr Bachchan struggling to induce coherence into the crippling chaos of a comic excursion gone horribly wrong, thanks to an inept and indifferent director. Mr Bachchan deserves a much better script and director than this. David Dhawan’s career as the czar of chuckles has taken a serious drubbing in recent months. Hum Kissise Kam Nahin is going to bring his comic stock soaring down. It’s sad when a comedy goes down under, since we don’t have too many reasons to laugh at the movies any longer. Dhawan seems to think signing on a handful of big-name stars and well -known characters actors like Himani Shivpuri, Ashish Vidyarthi and Arbaaz Khan in walk-on parts is enough to ensure the intended mirth from going awry. How wrong can a filmmaker go in his smug assessment of audiences’ tastes? We only have to see Dhawan’s latest concoction to know the truth. Stars work, but only when the screenplay does. Even an accomplished cameraman like Manmohan Singh pans the scenic landscape with discernible listlessness. Anu Malik composes cacophony in the name of music.
Everything in this film makes us uncomfortable rather than amused. This is one film that its four principal stars would like to forget. As for David Dhawan it’s time for some serious re-invention of the comic formula. This isn’t the least funny or entertaining.