Mindless, mad-cap and chaotic comedy!

As expected, De Dana Dan is a film you can only watch after leaving your brains at home. In this case, you should also leave your ears behind as the film is consistently noisy and loud.

It is quite a task to pen the synopsis of a movie that has more characters that you can count and more confusion than you can imagine. Think of it as an unintelligent Kaminey. Akshay is Archana Puran Singh’s servant and Katrina is his money-bags girlfriend. Tinu Anand is her father who wants to marry her off to a wealthy boy. Akshay’s best friend, Suniel Shetty is a courier boy who loves Sameera Reddy. Her father, Manoj Joshi wants her to get married to Chunky Pandey who is Paresh Rawal’s son. Paresh Rawal is a fraud with a detective after him. Sunil and Akshay want to run away with their girlfriends so they make a fake kidnapping plan to extract money from the wealthy but stingy Archana Puran Singh. How they get rich is what the film is about.

DDD is an assault to your senses right from the beginning. The background score gyrates on your nerves. Every character yells at the top of his lungs. Akshay is the only one who talks normally. His performance is sincere, making you feel sorry for his character. Sunil delivers yet another solid performance and his chemistry with Akshay is evident.

Archana loves her dog Moolchand more than she likes Akshay so for every error of his, she kicks him into the pool. The scenes between Archana, Akshay and the dog remind you of Tom, Jerry and the Bulldog while the office scenes are straight out of The Devil Wears Prada. She is her usual, loud self but cracks you up in some scenes with Akshay.

The first half is bad but you can’t help laughing in some portions of the second half. The comedy is slapstick with lame dialogue and sexual innuendo. There are too many sub-plots for you to keep up with. The plot goes haywire all the time and the characters go with the confusing flow. The film culminates in a flooded climax with poor effects (borrowed generously from Titanic) that is exaggerated and goes on endlessly. Boy, are you glad when the film is over!

The film is regressive with Katrina’s father slapping her and her mother mouthing some lines about ‘taking care of your child.’ Most of the songs (Baimulaiza and Paisa) are dream sequences ala circa 1990, only glossier. They may be catchy but they are incongruous. The sets look dated. The film is set in Singapore but all the cops (the ones you need to deal with) are Indian and the kidnapping of an Indian servant is printed on the first page of a leading newspaper.

The film tries hard to be like Hera Pheri, even borrowing the kidnapping confusion from it, but it fails. That is mainly because as a trio, Sunil, Paresh and Akshay have no chemistry or scenes together.

The girls have nothing much to do in the movie except look glamourous and gorgeous. Kat smiles her way in short, figure-flattering dresses through the film and you quickly notice that isn’t her voice. Sometimes, she looks worried. Sameera tries hard to act. Aditi Gowitriker, as Paresh’s young wife looks hot but her acting is very bland. Con woman cum prostitute Neha Dhupia enters with a noisy item song in which she wears several kinky outfits but looks lost. Later, she has some funny last lines.

Shakti Kapoor is his usual horny self. Rajpal Yadav plays a waiter and has a funny scene with Suniel Shetty. Manoj Joshi is good too. It is high time Paresh Rawal did an intelligent comedy that does justice to his talent. This is just another run-of-the-mill role for him. Asrani makes an impression as a Don and so does Johnny Lever, his hit-man. Watch out for the scenes where Asrani has to deliver a dead body to Akshay and when Johnny goes overboard with chloroform.

DDD is a senseless, mad-cap, over-the-top, cacophonic comedy. If clanking vessels, silly staircase chase sequences, and hyper people slapping each other, ear-splitting screams, mistaken identities and crazy nonsense is your type of comedy, then this one’s for you. DDD will appeal to the front-row guys and people who liked Singh is Kinng, Welcome and the like. Out of all the films that Akshay has done this year, DDD is the only one in which people were clapping. It will break his flop spell.

But we would recommend that you take a pair of ear plugs along.

Janhvi Patel/Hill Road Media