By IndiaFM News Bureau, November 12, 2003 - 10:20 IST
Bharat Dabholkar, the man behind all those rib-tickling, topical Amul hoardings and the supreme king of 'Hinglish' stage comedies, makes his transition to Bollywood. Under the banner of his weirdly titled production house 'Why Not', Dabholkar's debut film is more unusually titled as “God Only Knows!”. And despite a casting devoid of star value, the USP of the film lies in its ability to invoke laughter. As the director puts in “This is the mother of all 'hatke' films”
The storyline
The king of Gods – Indra (Dilip Prabhavalkar), desires to see a 20th century man. Fair enough! But what he gets is much more than he has bargained for, when the famed mischief-maker Narad (Vihang Nayak) uses his trouble-making ploys and gets a minister to the Gates of Heaven.
But the minister (Anjan Shrivastava), a thorough-bred political animal, falls prey, not to the godly aura of heaven or it's seductive apsaras, but to the alluring grandeur of Indrasan – Indra's celestial throne. This is the 'kursi' of his dreams, the ultimate seat of power!
The devious minister immediately gets to work. Having convinced Indra to let him remain in heaven for a few days, he gets his secretary (Kishore Pradhan) from earth. He then starts using all his earthly political wisdom to form an opposition party from amongst the celestial host.
The powerful but gullible Yumraaj (Vijoo Khote) – the Lord of Death, is convinced and the first heavenly opposition is born.
What follows is a mosaic of hilarious events.
- Indra sets for a political espionage dressed in the garb of an attractive nymph!
- Menaka (Sharbani Mukherjee) gets a make-over as Britney Spears to seduce, oops… win over the Minister!!
- Hip and smart advertising executives (Suresh Menon and Benika) are flown down (or is it up??) to Yamsabha to create an advertising campaign to give Yamraaj a new shining poster-image!!!
Elections break out in Swarg (heaven) and when all constitutional means fail to avoid a 'hung parliament', a political Qawalli resolves the problem.
More on the film
This costume drama spoofs every imaginable thing from Bollywood, politics, hospitals, income tax to advertisements. It's a tension-free laugh riot without any vulgar jokes or double meaning humor. 'A serious satire!'
The 130-minute film has 40 minutes of musical score by Louis Banks, who has scored the music for all of Dabholkar's plays. The film shot in 3 schedules by cinematographer Mahesh Aney (the director of widely successful TV show 'Movers & Shakers') was completed in 35 days flat. Another noteworthy aspect of the film is that it's executive producer – Ananya Dutt, has performed two sizzling item numbers in the film. And finally with all the actors having agreed to work at half their market price, the film was completed in a low budget of about 5 crores.
From a multi-faceted personality who gave more than 20 super successful stage comedies in the past two decades, his debut attempt at filmmaking is surely something to look forward to.
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