Mayank Shekhar's Review:De Dana Dan

In an interview to a music station, Akshay Kumar, the hero of this film says: He’d been narrated this script thrice over, and still he didn’t quite get it. This, I suppose, is a good reason to sign up for a movie. Read on for full review.

In an interview to a music station, Akshay Kumar, the hero of this film says: He’d been narrated this script thrice over, and still he didn’t quite get it. This, I suppose, is a good reason to sign up for a movie.

Akshay, it’s easy to tell, is an instinctual, comic actor. His career decisions should be no different. I’m certain he’d applied the same bases — “Eh, what’s this? Let’s do the film, for sure!” — when selecting scripts for his recent works: Blue, Kambakkht Ishq, Chandni Chowk To China et al.

Little surprise, the hero, midway through, disappears from the screen altogether. He probably couldn’t take it beyond a point. His character, a house-help, also can’t take his obnoxiously demanding boss (Archana Puran Singh). He and his friend (Sunil Shetty) kidnap her pet for ransom. The pet’s back home; Akshay, the servant, is considered abducted instead. This makes for a plot all right. It doesn’t even make for a fourth of this film.

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Suddenly the action shifts entirely to other vignettes, an unrelated one after another. De Dana Dan, goes the background score. Your ears begin to roll. Deciphering the narrative becomes then a minor challenge at solving a math puzzle — with every permutation and combination possible.

Paresh Rawal, indisputably Gujarat’s top movie star, plays a Punjabi money-swindler “Chadha Saab” instead. Cops are chasing him. He’s chasing two brides and their fathers for his son’s dowry. All of Priyadarshan’s stock actors (Asrani, Rajpal Yadav, whoever available for a day or two) are seen chasing someone or the other. Merely the purposes interchange. Shakti Kapoor, as the sleazoid, is of course chasing a prostitute. Little will make sense, or is meant to. There is simply no recess from this excess.

The picture is the longest advertisement for a hotel called Pan Pacific, where the action and a random flood are set. The backdrop is Singapore where, like all Bollywood movies placed abroad, an Indian with impeccable Hindi materialises from every corner: waiters, cops, courier boys, TV reporters… The genre’s literally slapstick, so you stick it out as a character or the other gets slapped across their cheeks, often ducked into masala, mud or mud-cake.

Millions have endured (or loved) Priyadarshan’s previous hits (and flops) of a similar flow: Dhol, Bhaagam Bhaag, Garam Masala, Mere Baap Pehle Aap etc. Earlier this year, the director picked up a National Award for Kanchivaram: a warm, quiet, Left-leaning Tamil film about a silk-weaver and his family. Few, including me, have seen that one.

In another interview, this time to HT, Priyadarshan says, “Somewhere down the line I’ve realised that if critics like a film, it doesn’t work; and vice versa. I hope they hate De Dana Dan.” Well, we’ve certainly met our half of the deal. I guess, it’s for the public to meet their end of Priyadarshan’s promise.