'Lage Raho Munnabhai' is terrific!

Lage Raho Munnabhai

Cast: Sanjay Dutt, Arshad Warsi, Vidya Balan
Direction: Rajkumar Hirani
Rating: ****

Tension. An ancient man removes his hearing aid, shirt, vest, trousers and even his pride, to demand his pension. The bribe-demanding babu is shamed. Wildly humorous and stingingly critical, many such moments add up to a terrific movie experience.
Or to Lage Raho Munnabhai, edited-directed by Rajkumar Hirani, an unfussy technician and a witty raconteur in the near-extinct style of Hrishikesh Mukherjee.

Sure, the sequel may not have the chilli hot ingredients of Munnabhai MBBS  – hey remember that sexy cabaret in a hospital ward ! – but it has a refreshing take on everything from love and fantasy to social issues. If a thousand smiles and a hundred tears are what you’re after, you’ve come to the right place.

Jazz up your life, then, with the jolly jackanapes Sanjay Dutt-Arshad Warsi aka Munnabhai-Circuit. Aha, they’re still into goondagiri – till Munna converts dramatically to Majnugiri and Gandhigiri.

Meaning our street toughie has fallen madly in pyaar-vyaar with a chirpy radio jockey (Vidya Balan). And who should be his Agony Uncle but the greatest of them all, Mahatma Gandhi himself?

Munna’s conversations with the Mahatma’s spirit (Dilip Prabhavalkar) could be hallucinatory “chemical lochas” or they could be a metaphor for returning to his tenets of truth and non-violence. Whaaatever... the appearances by Gandhi out of thin air (“woh Mr India jaisach hai”) account for feel-great entertainment, guffaws galore, gee-whiz gags and clever one-liners like the one thrown in a library, where a surly tea-boy huffs, only wackos show up. Yup, the brew’s sweet-’n’-strong.

Nicely, the kar-bhala sidebar mission of Munna involves the rescue of an old people’s home – inhabited by a lovable gang of geezers – from a colourful property shark (Boman Irani, hilarious in a Mumbaiya Sardar impersonation).

In addition, our hero must learn to say sorry, convince his beloved that he’s not such a rotten egg really, and even get on the airwaves to spread sunshine in  dingy middle class lives.

A softie cop sobbing away over the radio miracles and those sessions inside a jail, “a must for increasing one’s izzath”, are pithily punchy.

In fact, the street smart dialogue is the chief strength of the screenplay by Hirani-Abhijat Joshi-Vidhu Vinod Chopra. Oh oh but... the writing is not exactly generous with Munna’s lady love who is assigned a role as decorative as a Christmas bauble. No inkling where she came in from. No jockeying skills besides the signature call, “Goooooood morning.” Disappointingly, Circuit who’s a marvellous presence in every frame, gets short shrift towards the film’s latter half..

Troublesome, too, are some non-sequiturs: Munna who has boned up sufficiently on Gandhi’s history, can’t answer basic questions about him at a press meet. Strange.

Just for the record, too, if the first Munnabhai had elements of Robin Williams’ Patch Adams, this one has traces of another Williams movie, Good Morning Vietnam, not to forget the concept of Oh God! in which the Almighty descended to earth to help a good guy in distress...

Gratifyingly Hirani’s comedy has enough snap- ‘n’crackle to cover the lapses. The storytelling is swift, saucy and knife-sharp in critiquing the loss of Gandhian ideals. On the music front, Shantanu Moitra’s music is pleasant, including a gentle variation on Cliff Richard’s Theme for a dream.

Of the cast, Vidya Balan is charm personified... but could go easy on the potatoes. Arshad Warsi is sheer delight in his near-Buster Keatonesque style of deadpan comedy.

Above all, Sanjay Dutt is superb, alternately hot and cool. No other actor could have carried out the lovable rogue act as endearingly as he does. Cheers!

So, what’re you waiting for? Go ahead and give Munnabhai 2 your warmest jadoo ki jhappi.

khalid@dnaindia.net