Kamaal Dhamaal Malamaal Movie Review

Story: Hundred characters, a few losers, mistaken identities and dreams of a happy harvest amidst a friendly feud – all in a Priyadarshan village. Gettit?

Movie Review: Bring out your ‘marker pens’ and get ready to ‘check’ if this fits the bill for a typical Priyadarshan comedy. 1. An almost-rural setting. 2. A medley of whimsical character artists. 3. A complex, chaotic parivaar choc-o-bloc with more betas, betis, chachas and chamchas than TV-Land’s epic shows. 4. Stupidly, strictly, slapsticky. 5. A parallel romantic sidetrack that contributes one sugary spoonful-of-story to this mash-up. 6. A crazed-ending where everyone (from star-to-junior-artiste-to clapper-boy) appears in a mad-melodrama called ‘Priyan’s Climax’... Aaah! KDM makes all these ‘checks’ – Yes! Priyan and his motley crew are back, but this plough of his only reproduces a bad crop.

Rewind to two friends, David (Om Puri) and Peter’s (Paresh Rawal)fallout, where David went on to marry Mary (Peter’s sweetheart), and they both settled in the same damned village; with the burning issue being a 22-carat gold ‘cross’ stolen from the church (for Christ’s sake!). David’s son, Johnny (Shreyas), called Bakri by all (since he lacks ‘balls’ and bheja; bleat, bleat!), is in love with Peter’s daughter, Maria (Madhhurima), who has a female bodyguard called Bulbul Pehelwan(Pratima Kazmi), total Dabangg Sallu-style. And while his cranky, overworked baap digs away (like a Mumbai BMC labourer on a normal day) at the barren land; Bakri dreams of being a crorepati soon, by collecting lottery tickets. Enter the silent, brooding, hungry-man-with-no-name (Nana Patekar), who is probably David’s long-lost son (Amen!) or maybe not? He eats like a beast and digs like miner (probably looking for missing parts of this script); dramatically changing the lives of all the Davids, Peters, Repeaters, Bakris and Bulbuls here. Good Lord bless our popcorn!

One thing Priyadarshan doesn’t do is ‘lose the plot’ here; simply because there isn’t one to begin with. With clichéd humour that forces more yawns than laughs; blah-lines; Oddball characters and OTT situations; and of course the quintessential item number (Anjana Sukhani) that adds to the fizzle (Cross-our-hearts-and-hope-to-fry).

Shreyas’s character is spineless but he does his best to ‘back’ it. Nevertheless, with such a weak story there’s nothing that can help him win a jackpot. Om Puri attempts to ‘bear the cross’, but there’s no redemption. Nana Patekar puts up a tough-guy act (when was the last time he didn’t?) and walks through the film with a few dialogues (guess, there’s nothing more to say) and a deadpan expression. Paresh Rawal is completely wasted.

Our suggestion? Skip it. And save yourself from becoming a bakra.