Bollywood movies are full of nice people. Sure, the villains
are despicable, committing horrible acts out of the sheer love of evil,
but the good guys are often wonderful and self sacrificing, and even
when they have to break the law it’s because they need to pay for their
sister’s operation. And subsequent wedding. There are family dramas in
which every single character is a wonderful human being. And then you have Bollywood farces, like Golmaal: Fun Unlimited
(2006), in which the bad guys are still bad, and the occasional
supporting character is nice, but the leads are smug, self-centered
jerks.
Golmaal‘s jerks of interest are ringleader Gopal (Ajay Devgan), fast talking Madhu (Arshad Warsi), mute Lucky (Tusshar Kapoor) and naive college student Laxman (Sharman Joshi). The four are all crashing in Laxman’s room at the college’s hostel; while the others have dropped out of college years ago, they don’t have jobs or any other visible means of support, and the hostel provides a decent base from which they can scam the student body and harass the college’s hapless, neurotic dean, Mirchandani (Manoj Joshi).
After they get caught selling an exam, Laxman is kicked out of the college once and for all, and the others are thrown off the premises with him. This is bad, since not only do they no longer have a place to live, they also owe a great deal of money to Vasuli (Mukesh Tiwari), a local gangster with a Sanjay Dutt obsession. (Vasuli appears to be in the movie solely to give Arshad Warsi a chance to show off his Dut impression; it’s really pretty good.)
While hiding from Vasuli’s men, the boys stumble across the home of Somnath (Paresh Rawal) and Mangala (Sushmita Mukherjee), a kindly blind couple continually hoping for a visit from their grandson Sameer, now living in America. Gopal has a terrible idea – he’ll impersonate the couple’s grandson, allowing him to live in the house, and the others can move in as well. As long as they’re all completely silent, the old couple will never know.
It’s a great set-up for a farce, so naturally the rest of the movie largely ignores the boys’ tenuous living situation, focusing instead on the quartet alternately competing to woo Nirali (Rimi Sen), the disinterested next door neighbor, and inadvertently thwarting the henchman of the unfortunately named crime lord Babli (Sanjay Mishra).
The protagonists of Golmaal are, by and large, horrible people. Laxman is supposed to be the token nice guy, but he’s either in denial or incredibly susceptible to peer pressure; either way apart from the occasional gripe he’s a willing participant in the scheming and feuding. Lucky is probably the most sympathetic of the four leads, but that may just be because he doesn’t talk, and isn’t actively competing for Nirali.
On the other hand, in a farce you don’t necessarily need your protagonists to be sympathetic. Wackiness is more likely to ensue from selfish scheming than it is from noble self sacrifice. And Paresh Rawal is on hand to do a little acting, investing his paper thin character with remarkable pathos. He and Mukherjee even get their own dance number, a delightful black-and-white homage to classic Bollywood.
I’m not sure I’d call the fun in Golmaal unlimited, but it’s certainly sufficient. It’s a decent farce, with a few very funny moments, a few moments that fall painfully flat, a cast of horrible characters, and a plot that doesn’t bear thinking about for more than a minute.
Golmaal‘s jerks of interest are ringleader Gopal (Ajay Devgan), fast talking Madhu (Arshad Warsi), mute Lucky (Tusshar Kapoor) and naive college student Laxman (Sharman Joshi). The four are all crashing in Laxman’s room at the college’s hostel; while the others have dropped out of college years ago, they don’t have jobs or any other visible means of support, and the hostel provides a decent base from which they can scam the student body and harass the college’s hapless, neurotic dean, Mirchandani (Manoj Joshi).
After they get caught selling an exam, Laxman is kicked out of the college once and for all, and the others are thrown off the premises with him. This is bad, since not only do they no longer have a place to live, they also owe a great deal of money to Vasuli (Mukesh Tiwari), a local gangster with a Sanjay Dutt obsession. (Vasuli appears to be in the movie solely to give Arshad Warsi a chance to show off his Dut impression; it’s really pretty good.)
While hiding from Vasuli’s men, the boys stumble across the home of Somnath (Paresh Rawal) and Mangala (Sushmita Mukherjee), a kindly blind couple continually hoping for a visit from their grandson Sameer, now living in America. Gopal has a terrible idea – he’ll impersonate the couple’s grandson, allowing him to live in the house, and the others can move in as well. As long as they’re all completely silent, the old couple will never know.
It’s a great set-up for a farce, so naturally the rest of the movie largely ignores the boys’ tenuous living situation, focusing instead on the quartet alternately competing to woo Nirali (Rimi Sen), the disinterested next door neighbor, and inadvertently thwarting the henchman of the unfortunately named crime lord Babli (Sanjay Mishra).
The protagonists of Golmaal are, by and large, horrible people. Laxman is supposed to be the token nice guy, but he’s either in denial or incredibly susceptible to peer pressure; either way apart from the occasional gripe he’s a willing participant in the scheming and feuding. Lucky is probably the most sympathetic of the four leads, but that may just be because he doesn’t talk, and isn’t actively competing for Nirali.
On the other hand, in a farce you don’t necessarily need your protagonists to be sympathetic. Wackiness is more likely to ensue from selfish scheming than it is from noble self sacrifice. And Paresh Rawal is on hand to do a little acting, investing his paper thin character with remarkable pathos. He and Mukherjee even get their own dance number, a delightful black-and-white homage to classic Bollywood.
I’m not sure I’d call the fun in Golmaal unlimited, but it’s certainly sufficient. It’s a decent farce, with a few very funny moments, a few moments that fall painfully flat, a cast of horrible characters, and a plot that doesn’t bear thinking about for more than a minute.
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