David Dhawan directing a film called RASCALS with Sanjay Dutt and Ajay Devgan in comic roles was indeed a promising news. The promos looked good and few songs were also being noticed. But this was the scenario only before the release of the film and now after watching it I have a completely different story to tell quite sadly.
In the past, David Dhawan has been accused many times of copying from both the Foreign as well as our own Indian movies. Plus he was also into using the double meaning dialogues and songs to win over his viewers in those successful years of films featuring Govinda and Karishma Kapoor. Unfortunately in his latest venture too, David doesn't move away from his same old overused path and continues to use both these formulas in RASCALS in a rather disappointing way.
Firstly, writing his extremely weak storyline, the director and his writers take all their inspiration from an English Classic "Bedtime Story" (1964) which also revolves around two con-men trying to fool a rich lady and which was again remade as "Dirty Rotten Scoudrels" in 1988. Adding his own contribution in the script, David changes a wheel chair ridden imposter (in the Original films) into a fake blind man (Ajay Devgan) in RASCALS. But then later on strangely returns to the wheel chaired man again in the end as a loyal follower of the original. Interestingly this same plot and many similar sequences were earlier copied by Bollywood in three films namely, "Johar Mehmood in Hongkong" (1971), "Khel" (1992) and then partially in the famous "Andaz Apna Apna" (1994).
Secondly this time, David goes even further in using the double meaning dialogues along with a lot of skin show by both Kangna and Lisa in the film. In fact, the sequences and dialogues used in these particular sequences even surpass all his previous films and can be easily termed as 'Vulgar', which usually work in the smaller centers.
The film starts off well with a better first half but in the later reels it gives you many unwanted boring scenes like the one in the deserted church with Satish Kaushik. So, with very few enjoyable comedy sequences, RASCALS is not able to deliver as per the expectations raised by all the talented names in its team. David stumbles several times in his script and direction. Soundtrack only gives you few catchy double meaning raunchy numbers as usual. The ladies are only there to shed off their clothes just at the word "Go". The supporting cast continuously hams in their badly written roles. And the leading heroes tend to shout more than act in the whole film. Though both Ajay and Sanjay have successfully played many comical characters in their recent films, but the same cannot be said for RASCALS.
In short David Dhawan's new madcap entertainer is surely mad but strictly not entertaining as per its promises made. But if you are really interested in con-men films then do watch both "Bedtime Story" and "Dirty Rotten Scoudrels" to know the difference in treatment given to the plot by their respective directors.
