Star cast: Anil Kapoor, Sanjay Dutt, Akshaye Khanna, Sushmita Sen, Kangana Ranaut, Sunil Shetty, Paresh Rawal.
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Plot: Anil is a police officer hot on the trail of Sunil Shetty who has stolen expensive diamonds. Paresh is chasing Sanjay and Akshaye because they have looted his bank. The paths of all these people cross.
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What’s Bad: Obviously, everything! Special mention must be made of the weak comedy, the senseless script, the dull music, the poor direction.
Verdict: No Problem is Anil Kapoor’s fourth production venture and, like the previous ones, it is a flop. It is Anil Kapoor’s Mission Impossible 4. For, making four flops in a row is indeed mission impossible, made possible by Kapoor.
Loo break: Any time, any number of times!
Anil Kapoor Films Company Pvt. Ltd., Spice Studios, Rawail Grandsons Entertainment & Software Pvt. Ltd. and Eros International’s No Problem (UA) is a comedy about a bunch of con men and bank robbers, a man whose new bank is looted and a police officer.
Yash (Sanjay Dutt) and Raj (Akshaye Khanna), by chance, befriend Zandulal (Paresh Rawal) who has just set up a bank for the benefit of his town, Robin, in South Africa. Yash and Raj loot the bank and escape to Durban where they are from, with Zandulal hot on their trail. Arjun (Anil Kapoor) is a police officer in Durban who is himself scared of criminals. His wife, Kajal (Sushmita Sen), gets fits of madness everyday for around 15 minutes when she wants to kill her husband. Kajal’s father (Shakti Kapoor) is a commissioner of police. Arjun and Kajal also have a daughter.
Arjun is on the lookout for Marcos (Sunil Shetty) who has stolen expensive diamonds. But these diamonds, kept in a minister’s house, get stolen by Yash, Raj and Zandulal. Obviously, Marcos is thirsting for their blood because he wants the diamonds back. There is another track of Raj romancing Sanjana (Kangana Ranaut) who considers herself to be the most beautiful woman on earth.
Story and Screenplay
Anees Bazmee’s story does not even pretend to be original but it is so oft-repeated that it’s not funny. The screenplay, penned by Anees Bazmee, Rajiv Kaul, Ikram Akhtar and Rajan Agarwal, is pathetic. Although this is a comedy, and one is not supposed to look for logic in a comic fare like this one, it takes the cake for dishing out nonsense in the name of entertainment. Scenes come one after another so haphazardly that the viewer wonders whether all the four writers wrote one script together or they wrote four different versions which were then mixed randomly. There are so many scenes which start, progress a bit and end abruptly because there is nothing to take them forward or because, probably, the writers didn’t have time to come up with something worthwhile to take them to their logical conclusions.
The writers have given very unusual characteristics to three characters – two of whom are very important in the drama – so that the already farcical drama looks even more silly. Arjun has two bullets lodged in his stomach so that he breaks into peals of laughter when they travel inside his abdomen and tickle him. Kajal gets attacks of mad- ness everyday, because of which she only wants to kill her husband. And DC (Mukesh Tiwari) has the ability to transmit electric shocks whenever he touches someone because he himself had got an electric shock earlier. Three such implausible acts repeatedly shown is too much to digest in one film. What’s more, everybody in the film speaks so loudly that it almost looks like the film is not one or two but many surs higher than what it ought to be.
It wouldn’t be wrong to say that no character in the film is believable. Even this would’ve been acceptable had the drama made the audience laugh, but the unfortunate part is that most of the incidents, jokes and dialogues (penned by Anees Bazmee, Rajiv Kaul, Ikram Akhtar and Nisar Akhtar) are so insipid and childish that they don’t even bring a smile, leave alone making people laugh. Also, some of the actors look so bad that it gives the audience the feeling that they have not even bothered to look good on screen. This will also irritate the audience because the least the viewer expects is cent per cent involvement of the cast members – and looking good is an important part of involvement in the film.
Star performances
Anil Kapoor tries hard to rise above the script and is sincere in his performance but there’s little he can do about the weak screenplay and the several silly scenes. Sanjay Dutt is fair but he does look like he has not rested enough before facing the camera in many scenes. Akshaye Khanna is natural but even he could have taken more care of his looks. Note, for instance, the scene in which he dresses up as a girl: he has a salt-and-pepper stubble in the scene!! Couldn’t he have been clean-shaven to look more like a girl? Sushmita Sen and Kangana Ranaut seem to be competing with one another for looking ugly! Sushmita Sen is not in form and irritates in her ‘madness attack’ acts. Kangana Ranaut looks quite ghastly and her role is weird. She does an average job. She seriously needs to improve her pronunciations of English words – or to stop using them. Sunil Shetty is alright. Neetu Chandra hardly adds anything. Paresh Rawal, looking unkempt for no rhyme or reason, is not in his element – and he has the script to blame for it. Shakti Kapoor passes muster. Baby Saloni hardly gets any scope. Rajesh Balwani, as the film director, is natural. Ranjeet, Mukesh Tiwari, Vishwajit Pradhan and Jeetu Verma fill the bill. Suresh Menon has been wasted. Paresh Ganatra, Anil Nagrath and the others are as usual.
Direction
Anees Bazmee’s direction is dull. He has been able to neither hold the audience’s attention nor make them laugh. Even the work he has extracted from out of his actors is below the mark. Music is a big letdown. Except for the ‘Mast Punjabi’ song (composed by Anand Raaj Anand), all the other numbers (Pritam, Sajid-Wajid) are weak. Song picturisations are ordinary. Lyrics (Shabbir Ahmed, Kumaar and Anand Raaj Anand) are nothing to shout about. Sajid-Wajid’s background score, like the rest of the drama, is too loud.
Bobby Singh’s cinematography is not eye-pleasing. Action scenes, composed by Abbas Ali Moghul, are functional. Prashant Singh Rathore’s editing is terrible.
Verdict
On the whole, No Problem is a very poor fare and its box-office journey will be beset with problems. The first major problem has come in the form of a dull start. Matching public reports will make the film a huge burden for all concerned.
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