If you look at Ajay Devgn’s filmography in recent years, it’s filled with remakes of hit films or sequels to established IPs. The funny thing is, when it comes to sequels, his movies have created sequels to remakes where the original filmmaker never tried to do a part two. Son of Sardar 2 is one example of that tendency. It was rumoured that the news that Hindi makers of Drishyam were trying to do a part 3 on their own was what pushed Jeethu Joseph to do his version at the earliest. I am talking about this IP, sequel thing, because this has become an exercise of fooling the audience using an established franchise. The original Dhamaal, which was released back in 2007, was an adaptation of Stanley Kramer’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. While he stopped at that, Indrakumar went on to make sequels to that idea. In 2019, Ajay Devgn sort of hijacked this franchise in an attempt to make it bigger. And looking at the quality of Dhamaal 4 and the announcement of Dhamaal 5, this has definitely taken the shape of a job assurance scheme for many at the cost of the audience’s brain health.
So, as always, Guddu and Johnny have information about a secret treasure, and a guy named Prithvi knows its location. While trying to chase Prithvi to get the location, Guddu and Johnny get involved in an accident, and Lallan, Adi, and Maanav become part of the mission while trying to save them. The three teams trying to get to that treasure first to get it all is what we see in this movie.
The movie’s channel partners are channels like Pogo and stuff, and I found that highly offensive to those kids who are enthusiastic about Anime and stuff these days. Slapstick comedy revolves around physical comedy, but that doesn’t mean adding too much of that in a scene, which is basically a single line in a screenplay. This film starts with a Pirates of the Caribbean-inspired setting just to introduce the hero and the new treasure. The way that the scene goes itself gives you an idea of how things are going to be in this movie. Every franchise has an aspiration to upgrade itself when they go ahead with newer films. With Total Dhamaal and now Dhamaal 4, they are basically repeating the same thing, but with shoddier writing.
One of my early memories of watching a positive movie review in video format was that of Rajeev Masand reviewing the first Dhamaal, calling that movie a squeaky clean comedy. That clean comedy tag is no longer suitable for this franchise. The overweight wife of Lallan, Paroo, is the source of comedy in this movie at numerous points. Then they are using the stammering of a character for comedy. There is one whole sequence where the tribals are made fun of. All these elements show you how creatively dry the makers are in developing sequences. One of the funniest sequences in Dhamaal was how Maanav had to volunteer for something because everyone else stepped back. That was a hilarious one as it was a simple visual idea. But here they are running after body-shaming jokes. The introduction of Aadi and Maanav in this movie has a sequence with one pulley set piece, and I was wondering about the narration the actors may have gotten for such a forcefully comical scene.
Some of the shots in this movie are completely in front of a green screen, and almost all the shots in this movie have some green screen element. Ajay Devgn has a visual effects studio named NY VFXwaala, which has done the visual effects of this movie, and as far as I know, these visual effects companies do hire a lot of interns. Looking at the previous works of NY VFXwaala, the work in Dhamaal 4 seems like they just gave the footage to a pool of interns and decided to go with whatever output those people gave. The coloring, texturing, shadows, etc., in the visual effects department are extremely tacky. The film being slapstick is not an excuse to slap cheap CGI on people’s faces. The presence of the tiger in Hangover made us laugh, but here the kind of tiger they have shown would make us laugh at a real tiger. And by the way, there is an entire AI sequence at the beginning of the movie.
It seems like they wrote the story keeping in mind the dates of the stars. There are only two sequences in the movie where the whole cast is seeing each other, and the rest of it just has gags featuring each set of characters. Every other subplot in the movie does not contribute to the story. It is almost like the movie is a bit calm now; let’s add an octopus or snake or tiger to make it chaotic. There is this bizarre comedy where Ajay Devgn throws the mobile phone to the kids who are with him in the middle of a violent sea. And after that, there is this spoofy “fool aur kaante” scene featuring the dolphin split they revealed in the trailer. And in the back of my mind, I was wondering how Sanjay Mishra may have reacted to all these things while they were being narrated to him. Just to add value to the album, they have recreated the Gulabi track. Just to go with the trend, they have included Jai Shri Ram even in a slapstick comedy. One of the most iconic Pirates of the Caribbean entries of Captain Jack Sparrow has been ruined by Indra Kumar in this movie.
Ajay Devgn doing the role with his usual set of expressions is endurable, but when he forces himself to be comical in certain instances, it is just difficult to sit through. Instead of reprising Lallan, Ritesh Deshmukh is almost mimicking that character. Aadi and Maanav are made more duffer this time, and fortunately, the actors Arshad Warsi and Jaaved Jaaferi knew how to maintain the meter. Ravi Kishan is given this Sasta Jack Sparrow kind of role. Sanjay Mishra was perhaps the only actor who managed to crack me up with that chai and biscuit dialogue. Upendra Limaye seems to be in every other Hindi movie these days in some way. I might have to watch one or two episodes of Raat Jawan Hai to erase my memories of Anjali Anand from this movie. Sanjeeda Sheikh is basically screaming and getting beaten up in whatever scenes she has in this movie.
They say when mediocrity is set as a standard, rubbish becomes acceptable. The box office response to some of the recent Hindi movies like Bhoot Bangla and Welcome to the Jungle somewhat justifies that statement. And I feel that trend is only going to make it more difficult for the Hindi film industry, as original voices won’t find backing. When you are made to starve, you may not be looking for proper food. You will eat anything the stomach can digest. I personally feel the lack of good content is slowly taking the Hindi audience to that space.
