Movie review: Ghanchakkar is less hysterical than expected

Movie: Ghanchakkar
Language: Hindi
Starring: Emraan Hashmi, Vidya Balan, Rajesh Sharma and Namit Das
Directed by: Raj Kumar Gupta

A loud wife, a forgetful husband and two goons in search of missing booty makes for an intriguing plot. But it seems like the amnesia attack had a lasting effect on the scriptwriter as well and that made 'Ghanchakkar' less hysterical than expected.

What's it about?
Sanjay Athre (Emraan Hashmi) lives with his 'ultra-modern', magazine maniac wife Neetu (Vidya Balan) in Mumbai. Sanju gets a call one night from Pandit (Rajesh Sharma) and Idris (Namit Das) to loot a bank and divide the spoils after three months when the hype dies down. While the robbery happens as planned, Sanju is given the task of guarding the booty. But the real drama begins three months later when in an accident Sanju loses his memory partially and fails to even recognise Pandit and Idris. The 'Ghajini' syndrome makes everyone helpless and Sanju gets a deadline to return the haul. Will he, won't he? You'll have to keep guessing till the very end.

Right from the animated beginning credits, 'Ghanchakkar' makes you take keen interest in it. The first few minutes set the mood for the story and the entire first half keeps you on the edge, occasionally forcing you to double up with laughter. It is the second half that dilly-dallies and crawls its way to the end. Soon after you start warming up to the second half you realise that it was a joke far too stretched. The 'mujhe kuch yaad nahi aa raha act' definitely adds a lot of masala to this potboiler but the flat-as-a-pancake script alas, gets monotonous.

Emraan Hashmi as the lazy husband is a natural. We equally enjoyed him with his 'yaadasht' issues. After doing many over-achiever, go-getter kind of roles; Hashmi dazzles as a slowpoke, laggard husband. Equally entertaining was his onscreen wife Vidya Balan, whose garish outfits and boisterous nature won half the battle for her. As the OTT punjaban, even her simple small talk at the dinner table made for delectable scenes. However different, we cannot rule out the stereotypical 'hain'? that ended most of her conversations. Rajesh Sharma who had impressed us in 'Special 26', makes no mistakes here too. Also interesting was the 'babu' look given to him. Even though Namit Das stuck to his character, we felt he was the loose end of the chain. He attempted at being funny but neither his jokes nor that unnecessary 'doctor-doctor' phone sequence were good enough for us.

With an almost flawless first half, 'Ghanchakkar' made us expect so much more than it turned out to be.

What to do?
With power-packed performances by the lead couple, 'Ghanchakkar' could have been the perfect mad fun this weekend. Irrespective of that, we suggest you revisit the 'main kaun hoon' syndrome with this one.