De Dana Dan - Review

It's Priyadarshan time once again. A mad caper filled with over-the-top slapstick humour coupled with the successful combo of Akshay Kumar, Paresh Rawal & Sunil Shetty. Does it work?
Not at all. It can be called a mind numbing experience.

De Dana Dan is a twisted story of how Nitin (Akshay Kumar), who is a servant/driver of mean & crude Archana Puran Singh is in love with rich girl Anjali (Katrina Kaif). Frustrated with his life, he attempts committing suicide & ends up meeting Ram (Suniel Shetty) who's life is equally miserable. They plot a plan to make money of Archana & end up getting caught up in a vortex of madness.
On a parallel plot, conman Harbans (Paresh Rawal) is looking to get his son (Chunkey Pandey) married off to whoever has the maximum dowry money & he too gets entangled in a web of lies & misunderstandings.
Ironically all the characters end up at one hotel & that's where the story unfolds, making it a maniacal adventure for all.

The film has a plethora of actors & can hardly be called an Akshay Kumar film. Additional characters include weird accented chinese gangster Asrani & sleazy as always Shakti Kapoor amongst a host of others.

The first half of this film is extremely boring & the narrative extremely weak, while the second half is haphazard & makes for the odd laugh here & there. The fault is in the screenplay itself which stretches & pulls beyond requirement. The film is painstakingly long & needs to be trimmed by atleast 30 min. The climax is absurd & pointless.

Priyadarshan's direction is nothing to write home about as he attempts this ominous task of weaving 15-20 characters into a single plot. Also, the movie has his typical style of filmmaking with the climax having each & every character in the film running behind each other.
The music is strictly OK & the good melodies are not included in the film.

Of the actors, Paresh Rawal has the meatiest role but doesn't impress. This can be considered as one of his weak performances. Akshay Kumar delivers his 5th turkey this year & has bid adieu to good cinema. Sunil Shetty just about manages. The female actors are hardly present. Shakti Kapoor is apt. Johnny Lever, Rajpal Yadav falter.

From the comedy house of Priyadarshan, this one's a rotten egg. Having done great work before, he doesn't manage to hold the audience & at best delivers a few laughs. At the box office, one doesn't see it going too far & I strongly recommend everyone NOT to watch this film.
Save time, Save money, Save sanity.

Critical: 1.5/5
Commercial: 2.5/5