Fun2shhhh fails to click, SUBHASH K JHA IANS Options

[Pradeep]

Starring: Paresh Rawal, Anuj Sawhny, Iqbal Khan, Raima Sen, Netanya Singh, Farida Jalal, Kader Khan, Gulshan Grover, Paintal

Written, Edited & Directed by: Imtiaz Punjabi

This one has the characters climbing up a stone wall...with us following right behind... . Far away in the land of dreams and kings and empires there once lived a king called Babusha. He looked a lot like Gulshan Grover who also looked a lot like Babusha's twin in present times.

Grover in two comic roles with Paresh Rawal heading the cast? Hmmm... sounds familiar. We saw an identical scenario with the same two actors in Raman Kumar's Wah Wah Ramji Jodi Kya Banayi barely a month ago. We've also seen Rawal team up with two young leading men in Hera Pheri , Awaara Paagal Deewana and Hungama to give the matinee idols a run for their funnies.

Rawal isn't half as funny in Fun2sshhh . Here he plays a much younger character than in his earlier films. The hilarity inherent in a generation gap is thereby bridged. But hey, don't go away. Debutant director Imtiaz Punjabi's comic romp is quite amusing to begin with.

It has a terrific cast of comic virtuosos, not just the likes of Kader Khan (playing a harassed security officer trying to retrieve a tiara from the 10th century), but also the Anuj Sawhny who after Nayee Padosan again displays a flair for wide-eyed hilarity.

So picture this. Rawal and his two young friends Sawhny and debutant Iqbal Khan (serving the same purpose as Akshay Kumar and Suniel Shetty in Hera Pheri ) crash into a stone wall and enter...what looks like a lavish set for a costume drama. The threesome's initial wonderment is well projected into the parodic periodicity.

Ajju (Sawhny) insists they've entered the sets of a costume drama, "probably Yashji or Bhansaliji's film," he adlibs. Ha ha.

Now comes the ho ho. The 10th century set-up is swamped by lovable wackos. Paintal as a futuristic sage who "invents" the telephone and the automobile is a special riot.

You're tickled pink in the sequence where Paintal excitedly shows Rawal his new invention—two halves of a coconut shell tied by a string by which people can communicate from a distance—only have faint when he sees Rawal talking into his cellphone. Don't ask how Rawal's 21st-century mobile works in the 10th ask. More pertintently, let's ask if Fun2shhh works . The answer is, less yes and more no. While portions of the first-half are enormously amusing the mirth in the second-half meanders into a dead end.

The anachronistic antics of our trio of heroes in the first-half begin to gradually appear juvenile and then downright infantile towards the end when the screenwriters are obviously out shopping for more plot.

The romancing with the two princesses is anaemic. Remember Dharmendra and Jeetendra's full-throttle chariot-race courtship of Zeenat Aman and Neetu Singh in Manmohan Desai's Dharamveer ?

Though Raima Sen looks regal she's quite a downer after Choker Bali . As for the other two newcomers Iqbal Khan and Netanya Singh they're as comparable to Jeetu and Neetu in Dharamveer as Pritam's songs and music in this film to Laxmikant-Pyarelal's score in the Desai drama.

At best mildly amusing, at worst downright exasperating Fun2shhh is appealing as a spoof of yesteryears' costume dramas like Azad , Suraj and Dharamveer where commoner heroes in sublimated sarongs wooed princesses with roses and songs. Here, the swashbuckling spirit is subverted to a point where swords are completely done away with.

Eventually the spoofy spirit dissolves, and we're left with only the sumptuous sets and three working class heroes gone to the past to have a blast who you know in your hearts are wearing designer-underwears under their sarongs.