Rascals Review
Rascals is what one can call a ‘vacation’ filmmaking stint where everyone works on the film as if they were on a ‘holiday’ and the audience is expected to ‘leave’ their senses behind. The actors make least efforts to add conviction to their performances and the patchy writing just allows them to play as they please. Invariably the director tries to camouflage the shallowness in the story by
adding depth only in the decibel
levels of the
dialogue delivery.
| Cast | Sanjay Dutt as Chetan Chauhan, Ajay Devgn as Bhagat Bhosle, Kangna Ranaut as Khushi, Arjun Rampal as Anthony Gonsalves, Lisa Haydon as Dolly, Chunky Pandey as BBC, Satish Kaushik |
| Director | David Dhawan |
| Producer | Sanjay Dutt, Sanjay Ahluwalia & Vinay Chowksey |
| Presenter | Bharat Shah |
| Music Director | Vishal-Shekhar |
| Lyrics | Irshad Kamil & Anvita Dutt Guptan |
| Screenplay | Yunus Sajawal |
Speaking of which, my hands started hurting with the number of times Kangna Ranaut is pulled from Sanjay Dutt by Ajay Devgn only to be pulled right back by Sanjay Dutt. Imagine the number of times they must’ve done that while shooting those pulling-and-pushing scenes.
Story review: It’s
the story of two con-men, Chetan (Sanjay Dutt) and Bhagat (Ajay Devgn), who succeeds in conning a bad man Anthony (Arjun Rampal) separately. Chetan and Bhagat don’t know each other, but with the loot money they both fortunately decide to have an exotic
vacation in Bangkok. They got introduced on the same flight and tried to con each other. This time Chetan succeeds and leaves Bhagat behind in the hunt for revenge over Chetan. The story takes a u-turn when Chetan and Bhagat both fell in love with a rich socialite Khushi (Kangna Ranaut). They both desired to have her as a life partner, but more to that her money as a life-partner. Thus begins the cat and mouse run between Chetan and Bhagat to win the heart of Khushi by hook or by crook.
The story has lots of resemblances from David Dhawan’s own classic comedy “Deewana Mastana” starring Govinda, Anil Kapoor and Juhi Chawla in lead roles, and secondly Rakesh Roshan’s “Khel” starring Anil Kapoor, Madhuri Dixit and Anupam Kher in lead roles and which was itself inspired by a classic
Hollywood movie. Thus though the movie will look like a clichéd one, but David Dhawan’s current movie ‘Rascals’ totally belongs to its Screenplay writers, written by Yunus Sajawal, and most importantly its Dialogue writer, Sanjay Chhel.
Often you crave for a Govinda , a Kader Khan or a Johnny Lever to drop in and elevate this drivel to an acceptable level of idiocy. Instead you get a super annoying Chunky Pandey and Satish Kaushik with their false accents and ridiculous get-ups jostling your senses to evoke a titter.
Of its actual cast, Devgn is a notch better here than his Golmaal appearances and that’s mainly because he stays off body-hugging pink tee-shirts. Dutt is saddled by thankless role that makes him look silly for trying and sillier if he doesn’t Far from giving them amusing lines to deliver, Dhawan gets two of Bollywood’s worst dancers to shake a leg on Vishal-Shekhar’s noise of a soundtrack.
Last but not the least; let me draw your attention to the most offensive aspect of Rascals. Its women. Both Kangna and Lisa Haydon are reduced to pea-brained ob-jects of lust with absolutely no self-respect for themselves or their tribe. And so when Dutt equates Kangna’s shrill cries to a dog’s yelp after someone steps on its tail, you simply nod in agreement.
