Daily Times

Bhola Prasad Tripathy has hit upon the perfect scheme for easy living – marry rich women and live off their wealth – for a while at least, before moving on. He has about a dozen wives scattered between Lucknow and Benaras. He seems to be having all the luck, but his good fortune deserts him when he chances upon Murari.

Murari is a private detective who happens to be the uncle of one of his wives. He makes it his life mission to expose Bhola and sticks to him like a burr, becoming a partner to the conman in the process. Murari foils some of Bhola’s schemes and the trap gets set when Bhola falls in love with a young widow. For the first time in his life, his heart rules him instead of his head, making him break his own rules.

Comedies need an emotional track for them to work. Or at least the gags need to be structured like a Mexican Wave so that you lose yourself in the slapstick and forget the logic. The present film fails on both counts

You’re either too foolish or too brave to make a film about cheating husbands in this day and age. All the women, bar none, seem to fall for Arshad Warsi’s charm like ninepins in a bowling alley. They all want to sleep with him and have his children, never mind his bank balance or social standing. They blindly give him large sums of money without any thought for tomorrow or any sort of a collateral. They seldom question his absences and forgive him at the drop of a hat. They are so besotted with him that when he asks, ‘what’s for dinner,’ the answer is ‘mood’. They even team-up to save him from the police. All this is happening in the name of comedy, mind you. And what’s with the director’s obsession with fart jokes? There is a ten minute sequence involving Saurabh Shukla and Arshad Warsi where the latter suffers from the former’s flatulence in a closed car.

Comedies need an emotional track for them to work. Or at least the gags need to be structured like a Mexican Wave so that you lose yourself in the slapstick and forget the logic. The present film fails on both counts. It’s not even two hours long but still has a laboured feel to it. Arshad Warsi and Saurabh Shukla are both seasoned performers and hence gamely carrying on despite the hurdles placed in their way. Take away their contribution and the film falls flat. One wonders what motivated them to be part of such a disjointed effort?

Published in Daily Times, January 20^th 2019.