Crazy Cukkad Family Review

A few stray laughs does not make a comedy..but who will tell this to Bollywood’s newbie directors? The story line though done to death was promising in the sense that there was room for some crazy fun. But the narrative fails to cash-in with mistimed gaffes and plenty of idiotic goings-on.

The opening sequence familiarizes us with the Beri family’s riches. A sprawling home, and a huge tract of land that covers almost a whole mountain. But tight-fisted Mr Beri has sent his progeny away to fend for themselves in the hope they will have learnt the value of hard-earned money. But obvious, that did not happen. All the four children are badly in need of money and are only too willing to get back home when the lawyer, Guptaji, gives them a call inviting them to be there for the presentation of the will.

The eldest son (Swanand Kirkire) gets mixed up with a Politico-Don-financier who is now baying for the Rs.50 crore he had lent him. The manglish spewing virago of a daughter has no care for her cross-dressing husband(Ninad Kamath) and more time for her squashed ambitions that get skewered because of a dominating father. Since she was unable to participate in the Miss India contest she has now settled her hopes on the Mrs India one.  The third sibling(Kushal Punjabi) is a wannabe photographer in the USA who goes the Green card fake marriage route to stay on in the land of opportunity while the fourth , the youngest, a son(Sidharth Sharma), lives in New Zealand and needs money for a reason which the filmmaker expects us to be surprised with.

Imagine a mother whose husband is lying in coma allowing her children and their spouses to run beserk trying to grab at all the expected riches. I can understand that the mother wants and needs her children around just when she is faced with the possible loss of her husband. But why would she want to be surrounded by avaricious, unkind, self-centered sickos who have zero compassion or caring for the parent who gave them a great start in life- which they all frittered away anyway with their personal dysfunctions and irrational quests.

This is a crazy family alright but it’s not one that gives you much reason to laugh.

This one comes from the Prakash Jha films stable and it’s a first comedy attempt for them- but not a distinguished one at that. The writing by Suhas Shetty and Kushal Punjabi lacks both originality and smarts. The shrill dramatics are far more offending than engaging or interesting while what amounts to verbal slapstick comedy, doesn’t really crack you up the way it was expected to. Ritesh Menon’s directorial skills are not much of a primer for great things to come. The writing is mundane and clueless. The plotting is uninteresting and the purposefully hurtful dramatics doesn’t really generate any interest as such.

Swanand Kirkire is the only one who does a decent job at acting. The rest are merely passengers who cry foul every time they are instructed to do so. So chickening out from this outing would make the most sense!