Apna Sapna Money Money (Comedy)

Cast: Ritiesh Deshmukh, Shreyas Talpade, Celina Jaitley, Koena Mitra, Riya Sen, Jackie Shroff, Anupam Kher, Rajpal Yadav

Direction: Sangeet Sivan

Showing at Jai Nepal

Kathmandu:

After a slew of slapsticks on the magnanimity of money, this one’s another take on the mullah game. But by now the formulaic tricks to tickle the funny bone’s got as tedious as the itsy-bitsy sartorial skimpiness of the cheesecakes’ clothes on show.

Apna Sapna Money Money breaks no ground, and charters the over-trodden path traversed by movies that we’ve even lost track of by now. There are a precious few memorable moments when the movie even makes you sneer at at the characters (for most of the part you’d rather snooze off).

First half of the movie is a never-ending travail. The threadbare story has a dreadful don (Jackie Shroff) Carlos who controls his underworld activities from the underbelly of Bangkok. And guess what? He has the sensational and sexy (Celina Jaitley) as a mole, who undertakes his assignment in India — perhaps the only eye-candy throughout the entire ensemble of eyesores! Celina is assigned to dispatch diamonds worth Rs 50 crores to Carlos, and other characters including Kishan (Ritiesh Deshmukh) romp into the show out of the blue as a bunch of others who only contribute to it to make the entire episode one hell of a bummer. And the story stretches, with no definite end, with tuneless tracks tacked into the corny comedy as the comic caper fails to stir the spirits.

Of course, the second half of the show has a few subplots wherein other talents like Shreyas Talpade step in. The director even makes one final endeavour to make his point, as to why money is so important in our lives as the basti ki bacchi fights between life and death in the hospital bed. But as much as the flick flirts with humour, other than sexual innuendoes (if that’s what humour is), it flounders as it fights to touch audience’s feelings. If anything, if at all, stands out, it’s Retiesh Deshmukh who carries off his role with flamboyant flourish.

Rajpal Yadav as the Chote Sarkar lends some funny moments in the second half of the movie. Talpade of the stellar stature is absolutely wasted in a film that offers him nothing other than pine for his ladylove. The other two actresses Riya Sen and Koena Mitra do nothing more than serve as eye-candies.