REVIEW: Maan Gaye Mughall-E-Azam

If things do indeed happen in threes, Mallika Sherawat's next movie should also be a copy. Mallika's last film, Ugly Aur Pagli was ripped off from a little-known South Korean film My Sassy Girl. But the maker of the latest Mallika-starrer seems to have decided to go the whole hog and get 'inspired' by a classic instead.

Indeed, Maan Gaye Mughall-E-Azam is a copy. The film, which revolves around the escapades of a theatre group, seeks its 'inspiration' from the Mel Brooks-starrer To Be or Not to Be (1983).

So we are introduced to a theatre group that has an ageing actor Mazumdar (Paresh Rawal), his sexy and promiscuous wife Shabnam (Mallika Sherawat) and a bunch of other actors of whom one resembles a don.

Enter Arjun Rastogi (Rahul Bose), a dashing young man who comes to watch their plays just to ogle at Shabnam. Arjun we are told is in fact a senior intelligence officer who is in the area scouting for underworld connections.

As luck would have it, he overhears a local goon (Pavan Malhotra) plotting a bomb attack in the otherwise peaceful neighbourhood. He manages to avert trouble but also blows his cover in the process. So a ghazal singer Haldi Hassan (Kay Kay Menon) is assigned to complete the task.

But Haldi Hassan turns out to be a traitor and thus begins a series of misunderstandings that lead to a typical farcical ending.

What works in the film

Having said that Maan Gaye... is a copy, it must also be acknowledged that Mel Brooks' To Be or Not to Be itself is a remake of a 1942 film by the same name. It tells the story of a drama troupe trying to escape from the Nazi Germany. In fact it is so faithful to the original that in most places, it even takes the dialogues verbatim from the original.

But then there is a difference in an acknowledged remake and a rip-off. And thankfully somewhere Sanjay Chhel decides not to translate the dialogues from the original. Sadly, even though there are some mind-blowing lines in this film, almost all are lost because the plot of the film fails to hold your interest beyond the eleventh minute.

Paresh Rawal, as usual does a fantastic job, though we have all seen him in much better movies than this one. And his performance is certainly not enough to carry off the film.