Everyone in Hollywood loves shooting for a Michael Bay or an Adam Sandler film. Though they don’t make Oscar-bait films, everyone has a good time on the sets, they get fat paychecks and usually a successful run at the box office, leading to studios financing future sequels. The same could be said of Bollywood for a Rohit Shetty film. Basically everyone wins; except logic. Then again, as keeps being reiterated during Golmaal Again, sometimes you don’t need logic, just some magic.
The fourth installment in Shetty’s anthology-ish Golmaal series, in Golmaal Again, we once again encounter Gopal (Ajay Devgn), Madhav (Arshad Warsi), Laxman 1 (Shreyas Talpade), Laxman 2 (Kunal Kemmu) and Tushaar Kapoor who, just like the character he plays, is Lucky with a capital L. This time around, Tabu and Parineeti Chopra are wrangled in as the female, if not romantic, leads.
Growing up in an orphanage run by a benevolent philanthropist, the incessant rivalry between frenemies Gopal and Laxman 1 on one side and Madhav, Laxman 2 and Lucky on the other, is interrupted with the arrival of an infant girl. The new orphan is quickly christened Khushi because of the joy she brings around her and life is idyllic. Or as idyllic as life in an orphanage can be anyway.
Years later, the boys are now men, and back to warring, both sides employed by rival land-grabbing concerns. They still remain attached to the place and the man that gave them a childhood home and on hearing of the – obviously - latter’s death they find common cause to return. Here they meet Tabu, who runs the orphanage library and communicates with spirits with unfinished business, as one does.
They also meet the effervescent caretaker Damini (Chopra), for whom the hard-as-nails Gopal develops a soft spot, a fact quickly weaponized into a running joke because of the age difference between Gopal and Damini. Ghosts, gags and conspiracies ensue.
As with most of Shetty’s oeuvre, Golmaal Again straddles both Bollywood and South Indian cinema with a sort of Rabelaisian glee. Laws of physics (and other scientific disciplines) are ignored, emoting means exaggerating, dialogues are accompanied by sound effects and slapstick is everywhere. Not to mention so many bad puns that you get floored in the hall. See, it’s contagious. It is all truly a magnificent experience.
Don’t get us wrong, you will cringe. You will also cackle. Shetty adds so much masala to his movie that it truly becomes meta, transcending the absurd into searingly self-referential. Some of Bollywood’s most iconic ‘80s and ‘90s films play in the background of scenes (shout out to Khalnayak playing on a screen as the gang plans their machinations), dialogues are loaded with pop culture references, there’s a blind parent dressed in white, and bevies of presumably East European female extras flock to ornament every song sequence. And the product placement is so utterly brazen, you can’t help admire it.
The point is that if you want to explain modern and mainstream Indian cinema to somebody who has no knowledge about the subject, Golmaal Again should be your go-to film. It’ll be a blast.
As for the rest, the cast relies on its obvious chemistry to give you a smooth ride over the various plot holes (I seriously need to stop), going over the top when they need to and dialing back to solemn sobriety when required. Warsi and Talpade coax out the loudest laughs while Devgn sticks to his tough guy act; a tough guy who's scared of the dark, noises in the night and ghosts who needs his friend to lullaby the scares away, but a tough guy still.
Johnny Lever (unsubtly) reminds us why he used to dominate the comedy scene back in the day, while Vrajesh Hirjee, Mukesh Tiwari and Prakash Raj are excellent as usual. Sanjay Mishra didn’t seem to be particularly enjoying himself, but perhaps he’s just jaded by this fourth film. And unfortunately, yes. Tusshar Kapoor remains a source of irritation. Don’t let that stop you though.
Rating: 2.5 stars
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