Boney M must have cringed in their graves after listening to the newest rendition of their highly popular disco number for a film titled under the same name ‘Daddy Cool’. But that hardly matters when the film is a scene to scene copy of a British dark comedy called Death At a Funeral.

Thankfully, the producers of the film decided to buy the rights of the original, considering they’ve lifted the sets, the characters, the angles and pretty much everything in the book.

I went with no expectations whatsoever for the film and even with knowing what the next scene would be; I still laughed my guts out, though not constantly. The film starts off with the same old dead man Douglas (Sharat Saxena), whose funeral is being attended by his son Steven Lazarus (Sunil Shetty) and his other ten dysfunctional relatives, each one nuttier than the other, trying to keep a straight face at the solemn gathering where embarrassing secrets seems to spill out of the coffin about the family, even as family members such as Michael (Aftab) mops around in a deranged state. Jenny (Kim Sharma) and Carlos (Javed Jaffrey) add to the madhouse with their constant running to and fro to keep the house in order when chaos seems to be sparking off all around as they discover that Douglas in the coffin has a midget gay lover Andrew (Rajpal Yadav) who wants money to keep quiet. And just to justify that a Sunil Shetty can play a Steven Lazarus, the Christian family is set in good old Goa. Holy Mary mother of Jesus, bless this funeral gathering!

Suniel Shetty packs in a mean punch with his acting chops now that his career is not on the upswing; he holds the film together with his earnest performance. Ashish Chaudhary as his charismatic brother makes a complete fool of himself bumbling his screen time in tomfoolery. Javed Jaffrey has you in splits with his typical goan ma-ka-pav dialect along with his comic relief Vrajesh Hirjee. Chunkey Pandey wasn’t needed in the film and the bird’s nest of a hairstyle looks awful on him. Dwarf-like Rajpal Yadav is lost between the others and Prem Chopra provides his funny toilet humour.

Sophie Chaudhary’s much flaunted assets make up for the other women in the film and she’ll be a blessing for the front benchers. Other ornamental girls like Tulip Joshi, Kim Sharma, and Aarti Chabbria make good in their limited screen time. However it’s Aftab Shivdasani who takes the cake, considering he strips to his superman knickers in the end, plus points for that. He’s hilarious as the man high on a- valium -like -drug but he definitely needs voice modulation classes, after two minutes of screeching he sounds like a woman.

The sets are amateur, direction isn’t much to talk about, the dialogues get repetitive and the ending is that of a 1960’s melodrama. On the whole Daddy Cool is good for a couple of laughs after a real long day at work. And you are not going to emerge out of the theatre singing Daddy Cool. If you have seen the original film, stay away.

Samiya Shakir/ Hill Road Media