Partner

“Do you wanna Hitch,Oh Hitch,Do you wanna Hitch,Love me, Love me say!”

These should have been the lines of the hit number from David Dhawan’s latest offering, Partner. The creative (H)itch in David bhai has taken shape again, this time in an extremely loud and dumb form which seems to make his last venture Maine Pyaar Kyun Kiya, a masterpiece of sorts.

 

Prem bhaaaaaaaaai (Salman) is a self proclaimed love guru who plays matchmaker to all love struck souls. Incidentally, he makes a living out of it. Enter Bhaskar Diwakar Chaudhary (Govinda), a loser or sorts, who is in love with his billionaire cum billion dollar faced boss Katrina (who cares about her character’s name anyway!) but is almost non-existent in her high profile world. Prem has his own set of woes; he is in love with a single mother (Lara Dutta) who doesn’t seem to fall for his charms. Now, the plot is pretty wafer thin; Bhaskar wants Prem to help him get Ms. Billionaire and Prem wants to put an end to the single mother status of his lady love.

 

An extremely weak screenplay is what you get while sitting through this below average fare. The much touted Salman-Govinda pairing is not exploited to the benefit of comedy lovers; instead it’s reduced to mere caricature. The dialogues are outright silly; it was a deliberate attempt to make them sound that way. However, it only manages to raise only a few chuckles. Music is hummable and at the same time danceable for a couple of tracks. Choreography is strictly okay (except for the hogaya re number) as a lot was expected out of this department too.

 

The performances vary from good to the non-existent. Let’s go by the decending order. Salman Khan is truly the show stealer here. The actor has a great comic timing which is evident in all his scenes. He also looks younger and in great shape, thanks to his mandatory shirtless shots in the movie. It’s great to see him take a dig at himself for this compulsive “toplessness”. Lara Datta does her part well. The kid who plays her son is loud at times but is fine. Govinda! What can be said about him? Certainly one of his worst performances considering he actually reserves his best for a David Dhawan flick. He was LOUD, irritating and hammed outrageously throughout. It seems politics has sucked away the better out of him. All I can hope is he polishes those rough edges, gets back in shape (yes, he looked OLD and FAT) and does regularly what he is capable of- good clean entertainment. Rajpal Yadav is completely wasted in an inconsequential role. Oh! Yes, I almost forgot about Katrina. With great looks, impeccable attire and awesome legs who cares about performance!

 

Sorry David bhai, your “sincere attempt” at comedy this time with the much anticipated Sallu-Chichi pairing is almost a disaster. Most of your flicks are either Hollywood or Tamil movie rip-offs which seriously give you thumbs down on the creativity front even though you were successful in “hindianzing” them and turning them into quite amusing fares. God forbid if your next movie is “inspired” by Knocked up with Salman playing the lead or worse, Norbit with Govinda playing all the three Eddie Murphy characters!!!

 

As for Partner, half a dozen funny lines do not make a funny movie.

-Arun