All the Best (2009) -- [1.0/5.0]

Farce is a form of comedy, but when a majority of films falls into this category only, it’s a concern for me as a film viewer. “All the Best” is an out and out farcical film.

The film starts with a loud score with title sequence. After which we see that a couple Veer (Fardeen Khan) and Vidya (Mugdha Godse) receives some money to support themselves from Veer’s elder brother Dharama (Sanjay Dutta). Veer has lied to his brother that he is married to Vidya to increase his pocket money. Veer is associated with some band. He is a struggling musician. But what is his role in the band or what is he trying to achieve at the end of his struggle is never mentioned in the film.

Then we see another couple Jhanvi (Bipasha Basu) and Prem Chopra (Ajay Devgan). Jhanvi works hard to run a gym left to Prem by his father whereas Prem wants to make an ultramodern car using money sent by Veer’s brother. This character seems to be motivated by Fast and Furious movie series.

Veer and Prem borrows money from Tobu to participate in a car race and lose all the money. In order to repay the money Veer plans to give his bungalow on rent to RGV.

One day Dharama comes to Goa and wants to meet Veer and Vidya. Vidya has gone out for a meeting when Dharama arrives. He sees Jhanvi and thinks she is Vidya. Lots of confusion happens as they keep pretending that Jhanvi is Vidya and Vidya is Jhanvi.

Tobu and RGV keep coming in the picture and Veer and Prem speak one lie after another to cover up their initial lie. In the end Dharama comes to know the truth but before he can say anything his African girl friend arrives at the scene and says that the King of their land (who is her brother) is after Dharama’s life as she is pregnant with his child. In order to cover up his mistake, Dharama forgives everyone. Phew! So this was the story! Now the weak points of the film -

• All the characters in the film are extremely weak. No one seems to have any real problems in life. There have been films in which a character speaks few lies and lots of confusion happens because of that, e.g. Golmaal (directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee) but there the character has a genuine reason for speaking such a lie. Whereas in this film they speak lie without any logical reason. When Dharama comes and thinks that Jhanvi is Vidya and doubles Veer’s pocket money how difficult was it to say that “Bhaiya, you are mistaken this is Jhanvi, Vidya has gone out for some work.” It was not that there was no Vidya at all and they had to present someone as Vidya.

• Now Veer and Prem seems to be in need of money all the time but why? Veer is a struggler and his brother any which way sends him money in lacks of Rs, what was the need at the first place for him to pretend the marriage to increase the pocket money. And if marriage was really solving his problem he could have married this girl Vidya because he is anyway dating her.

• They borrow money for a car race? Now why would someone borrow money for it? That too 5 lacks Rs. They say that they want to triple the money. But why do they want to triple the money. Anywhere in the film it doesn’t seem that they have any real financial problem then why are they borrowing money.

• The film maker Rohit Shetty was an assistant of Aniz Bazmi and the entire film is kind of an exact replica of any Aniz Bazmi film. (Now in my opionion Aniz Bazmi himself is a bad film maker, it’s like someone copy a David Dhavan film).

Let’s compare it to Welcome (Akshay Kumar starrer) and see how Rohit Shetty is not original even in making this third class films.

1. The names “Welcome” and “All the Best”- none of the films have anything to do with these names but in the film, all the time we hear the annoying sound tracks “welcome…welcome…” or in this case “all the best…all the best…” .
2. Both the films have lots of situation when people confuse other people for someone else.
3. The climax offers no solution with the flow of the film but is an absolutely random sequence of totally absurd events.

There were one of two moments in the film which where a little funny- especially the comic timing between Sanjay Dutt and Ajay Devgan but overall the film is a disaster. Fardeen Khan should understand this that he cannot act and should leave this job forever to the people who can do it better.

Bipasha and Mugdha didn’t had much to do and they did exactly what was expected from them, nothing!!

Music was mediocre and the film would have worked equally well (or say not well) without the songs so they were quite redundant. Art direction and consume design where too loud. (And someone will have to tell Ajay Devgan that he will not look in his 20s by wearing those idiotic T-shirts).

I sincerely hope that comedy would not be treated like this by Hindi film Industry because to lock people in dark theater and torture them should not how comedy should be defined!