How much can one really say about a film that doesn’t have anything to say itself?
A character called Neeraj Modi (Inaamulhaq) - even with the last letter of the first name changed, it does bring to mind a certain fugitive diamond merchant named Mr Modi. He is the bad man here and as our leading men make a mincemeat of him, patriotism becomes the last refuge of Pagalpanti.
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“Desh ke liye ise aur desh ka churaya hua paisa” is actually uttered in this make belief world of do-gooders who might be the brand ambassadors of bad luck but have “desh bhakti ka jazba” still throbbing in their hearts .
In Pagalpanti, director Anees Bazmee along with writers Rajiv Kaul and Praful Parekh have spun a tale that has no head or tail. Raj Kishore (John Abraham), Chandu ( Arshad Warsi) and Chunky (Pulkit Samrat) are bound by dosti and supreme bad luck. Every business idea of theirs is a flop and they are now on the run from people who have lost all their money, thanks to their dodgy schemes. The three then meet Raja and Wifi (Saurabh Shukla and Anil Kapoor) - dons who live in a palatial house along with Raja’s daughter (Kriti Kharbanda) who has minuscule grey cells.
The first half goes in what can be best described as “pagalpanti”. Someone falls in love, someone else falls out of favour... they keep busy and we carry on. Post interval however with our patience having completely runout, it’s a pain one would ideally want to avoid. Even madness needs to have a method and a certain mastery of skill. Here, the “Pagalpanti overkill” just gets to us . Of the women - Kriti Kharbanda, Ileana D’Cruz and Urvashi Routela get a song each in which to take lead . As for the men - Arshad, with his natural comic timing gets the best dialogues and makes the most of it. Saurabh Shukla and Anil Kapoor are the reasons we don’t dismiss the film totally. But, Pagalpanti needs to have a limit and definitely a shorter runtime.
As things stand the best thing one can say about the film is that it’s a tad better than Housefull 4!
The Quint’s Rating: 1.5 quints out of 5.
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