Golmaal 3

He enviably suffers from a short-term memory loss. By the end of this flick, you wish, so could you. Or maybe you do. But do imagine a film industry screening of this comedy and all celebs in the house, rotfl (rolling on the floor laughing), as it were. It's truly that filmi. And for most parts hardly as funny for all. The cast and crew certainly had a laugh filming it. They even held an extended discussion on the picture Ghajini for us. Great for them.

How about telling a story of your own? Well that again, I guess, can be outsourced to '70s Bollywood: Basu Chatterjee's Khatta Meetha (1979), I suppose. Mithunda and his sweetheart once (Ratna Pathak Shah) are single still. Kareena Kapoor plays cupid, and gets them and their families together.

Old man fathers three adopted monsters: Ajay Devgn (can't resist cracking people's fingers), Shreyas Talpade (stammers for our pleasure). Old lady likewise mothers another set of aged orphans: Arshad Warsi, Kunal Khemu (in top form), Tusshar Kapoor (more moronic than mute). The two groups, supremely high on energy, hate each other. Another set of comic villains back the two gangs. Those buffoons have separate stories of their own. The missing link is the movie itself. No one anchors it.

Golmaal was a sleeper hit of 2006. Since then, several ensemble comedies (Dhamaal etc), some of them put together by this film's team as well (Sunday, All The Best) have tried to repeat the run. Golmaal 2 (second- rate stuff) apparently raked in big bucks. Such success can boost anyone's over-confidence. Which explains this turd part.

Finally the much awaited Golmaal 3 released and not to my surprise it was really disappointing. Rohit Shetty might have given good comedies like Golmaal, and average comedies like Golmaal 2 and All The Best earlier, but this one was a complete let down. I should more simply put it this way that with every subsequent release, the quality of movies made by him are decreasing. There was nothing new to offer in this movie and all the jokes were old. As always, comedy in the movie was character based rather than situation based. What the director was offering was comedy which would make us laugh on characters that had something wrong with them like someone could not speak, someone stammered and someone forgot things(just like Aamir Khan from Ghajni) and there were no situations as such which made a person laugh. Even good actors like Ajay Devgan and Arshad Warsi could do nothing to save the really really weak script. As always in Rohit Shetty movies, there was a lot of noise, lot of commotion, an irritating Tushar Kapoor, some larger than life fight scenes, but no good humor this time round. Mithun Chakravarty for most part of the movie was just making painful funny faces that left one irritated. I am sure he would not want to do another movie which is even close to similar to this. The story of the movie was very predictable and I would not like to shed any light on that because that would be wasting your time. I should say that this movie did not even qualify for a brainless humor flick. For most part of the movie, everyone was fighting with each other as if they were 5th standard kids. In the end I would just want to say that by all means you should avoid this movie, and still if you are willing to see this movie, it would be on your own risk. And by the way this movie is not a sequel to the previous parts but more like an episode based on the same characters.

The third in the Golmaal series, this one is a farcical comedy without much of a story. Inspired by the television serial, Family No. 1, and the film, Khatta Meetha (old), it is more of an assemblage of funny sequences pieced together in a screenplay by writer Yunus Sajawal. As the story line is thin and not even new or fresh, the emphasis is more on creating laughter in individual scenes. While the attempt is successful upto a point, the monotony in the drama and the lack of an engrossing story hit the audience, especially after interval. No doubt, some scenes in the first half and a few after interval are absolutely hilarious and bring the house down with laughter, but then, there are also scenes which are designed to evoke laughter and fail. Writer Yunus Sajawal's biggest flaw is the addition of the emotional track in the story. That's because while the emotions fail to touch the heart and activate the tear ducts, the track robs the film of the comedy which has, actually, come to become the mainstay of the Golmaal films. So, while the emotional aspect fails to have the desired impact, it does rob the film of its USP – comedy!

Shree Ashtavinayak Cine Vision Ltd.'s Golmaal 3 is a comedy of two families who ultimately unite into one. Pritam (Mithun Chakraborty) drives a school bus for a living and he has three adopted sons – Madhav (Arshad Warsi), Lucky (Tusshar Kapoor) and Laxman (Kunal Kemu). Geeta alias Guddi (Ratna Pathak Shah) has two children, both adopted – Gopal (Ajay Devgan) and Laxman (Shreyas Talpade). Daboo (Kareena Kapoor) is Gopal's girlfriend.

Gopal is a hot-headed guy whose temper spells danger. A raised finger at him is all that it takes to instigate him. Brother Laxman stammers while talking. Madhav, Lucky and Laxman keep borrowing money and losing it in suspect business ventures. Lucky has a speech problem – he can't speak. The path of Gopal and Laxman cross that of the three brothers in such circumstances that they become sworn enemies. Even as they can't see eye to eye, Pritam and Geeta meet by accident, and their love gets rekindled. Daboo realises that Pritam and Geeta, who were in love during their youth, still love one another. Since they are both unmarried, Daboo takes it upon herself to get them united in matrimony

Settling in to watch Rohit Shetty's Golmaal 3 next to me yesterday, a friend and fellow critic discreetly confessed that he'd been to a screening of the same film a day ago. I must confess to being momentarily struck dumb, unable to conceive of someone having turned into enough of a franchise fan to repeat a viewing on successive days.

Yet my 'wow, Mr Shetty' line of surprised-impressed thought was almost instantly interrupted by the aforementioned pal, further revealing that he had fallen asleep and now needed to watch the film again to review it. Ow, Mr Shetty.

A little over two and a half hours later, I staggered out of the theatre looking for caffeine, in complete empathetic sync with the friend. The phone rang. Another critic who saw it yesterday had plain forgotten the plot, and so wanted a quick recap. I wish I was making some of this up, but no. The best thing that can be said about Golmaal 3 is that it both enters and exits your system rather comprehensively, leaving behind nothing either memorable or of consequence.