Mere Baap Pehele Aap

Starring: Akshaye Khanna, Paresh Rawal, Om Puri, Shobhna, Genelia D’ Souza, Rajpal Yadav, Archana Puran Singh, Manoj Joshi, Naseeruddin Shah.
Director: Priyadarshan
Producer: Mansi Maroo, Ketan Maroo
What To Watch For: Hilarious Comedy by Om Puri, Paresh Rawal, Akshaye Khanna……..etc
What Will Bore You Away: At times a little over acting by Archana Puran Singh and Rajpal Yadav
My Analysis:

After a week of serious releases, here is a movie which is to make you laugh your way along the movie. Mere Baap Pehele Aap has proven itself to be a complete entertainer. The movie as the typical Priyadarshan movies has made people laugh n laugh n laugh. It’s a story about Janaradhan (Paresh Rawal) and his younger son Gaurav (Akshaye Khanna). Janardhan is a single parent who has brought up his two kids Chirag (Manoj Joshi) and Gaurav and now that the kids are old enough, Gaurav has started helping and managing the business his father owns. Gaurav is keen on keeping his beloved and innocent dad away from his “Tharki” friend, Madhav (Om Puri) who is determined to get married at this age. Janardhan and his Tharki friend Madhav always land up in troubles and are rescued at the right time by Gaurav; whenever Madhav tries hitting on babes who would’ve probably been Madhav’s daughter’s friend had he had a daughter (and the troubles also include their encounters with the cop played by Archana Puran Singh.). Amidst of this, one day, janardhan happens to meet Anuradha (Shobhana), who is gaurav’s college friend, Shikha’s (Genelia D’ Souza’s) guardian. And with that starts the story of our older hero, Paresh Rawal. Anuradha is supposedly Janrdhan’s long lost first love. Gaurav and Shikha notice the shyness and change in behavior of both Janardhan and Anuradha when they meet or talk to each other and decide to get the duo married. The way though is not easy.
The movie comes with a package of comedy, with Paresh Rawal and Om Puri giving their best at comedy. Om Puri is marvelous with Rajpal Yadav and Archana Puransingh being a little louder. Naseer Uddin Shah’s guest appearance is also a good one. All in all, the movie is a pleasure to watch.
My rating: 3.5/5

One Two Three

Starring: Suniel Shetty, Paresh Rawal, Tusshar Kapoor, Esha Deol, Sameera Reddy
Written & Directed by Ashwini Dheer
Rating: **

There’s this guy who comes quite early into this wacked-out comedy to serve Sameera Reddy, a car showroom owner, a notice.

He smiles and delivers his murderous missive, turns on his heels wears a frown and vanishes.

The thing about Ashwini Dheer’s flaky but frequently funny farce is that it’s got accomplished comic actors in the smallest of parts. Watch out for the seasoned Marathi actress who plays Tusshar’s mother. All she wishes for her son is that he excel in his work,namely killing people.

She sends him off on his first murderous spree in Pondicherry (where most of the acned, knock-kneed but never hackneyed action unfolds). Tusshar ends up at the doorstep of the wrong person, a loud Tamilian scrambled-brained lingerie designer (Esha Deol, cute and loud ).

Lingerie, or kachcha-banyan, as Paresh Rawal insists on calling them plays a big part in covering up the broadly exposed bases in this situational comedies where the best moments are those that the actors take over from the screenwriter and make their own.

Mukesh Tiwari displaying an unusual penchant for parody (forget the unfunny Buddha Mar Gaya) adding an extra ’s’ to every English word, is like Rakhi Sawant gone wrong.And Tiwari’s two sidekicks have their own subplots. One of them makes bombs that never goes off in time.

Luckily 123 gets its timing right most of the time.

It’s a war of nerves between the writer and the audience, as the one tries to outpace the…

Eventually the audience does get tired of watching three guys with the same name Laxmi Narayan getting mixed up in situations where the spoken words give nothing, and everything, away.

But our fatigue is slackened by the unslackened physical energy that the characters bring to the minutest of moments.

Ashwini Dheer comes from the sitcom culture on television. Nowhere does his framing or shot-taking give away his cramped antecedents. He enjoys the large open spaces that his crowded cast populates with parodic panache pouncing on the preposterousness in the plot with famished energy.

The cast is uniformly in-sync with the director’s vision, not allowing the shards of farce to be frittered away unused.

The smallest of cast member knows the job on hand. But Suniel Shetty gets as far away from his macho image as humanly possible as the timorous timid proper and punctual Laxmi Narayan on the run with a reined- in enthusiasm. We’ve seen Suniel do comedy before. But never so straight faced and sharp. He’s a surprise.

Tusshar Kapoor as Mama’s pet out to make his first kill is extremely accomplished. He labours over the loud comedy and gets the volume right. Paresh Rawal selling lingerie with uninhibited pride, is not the outright winner as he usually is in these comedies.

Has Paresh got complacent? Or have Suniel, Tusshar and co. got better at the funny stuff?

If only director Dheer had avoided the excessive crudity specially in Suniel’s prolonged sequence in the public loo with the cheesy hitman.

“Main nahin pukdunga,” he protests in a panic as the other actor (another small-time scene stealer in this festival of interesting actors) reaches into his pants.

Panic -attacks dominate the lives of these flustered characters. These lovable losers try to sell lingerie and cars while the director repackages the Shakespearean comedy of errors in a new auto-pilot manoeuvre that doesn’t quite have you holding your sides.

But the chuckles don’t stop.

Shortest role in the history of the comic farce goes to Upen Patel and Tanissha. They comes in with a song and go out with a bang. In-between they lose their grip over the giggle trip.

Director Ashwin Dheer quits while he’s ahead.