A moronic inferno with no saviour

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Just like some people don’t know their arse from their elbow, ditto it is with certain films. And Dum Maaro Dum is a very special one in that special class. The film is so soft in the head that nothing — no amount of super-duper hype, the haloed name of the Sippys and the mechanised gyrations of a refrigerated Deepika Padukone — can save this moronic inferno (sorry, Mr Amis).

Who can save a film if, a) the vaguely talented son of Mr Sholay Sippy promises a Goa thriller with hippies, murder, sleaze and drugs, but serves up an unending bore crammed with dull characters; b) the director takes a much loved song and hands it over to Bollywood’s resident Wookiee with a guitar who, to the full-throttle Dum maro dum of Asha Bhonsle, adds nasal screaming of Anushka Manchanda; c) the director replaces the goddess of oomph with a frigid figure who really shouldn’t have been peeled off the Kingfisher calendar; and d) the lyricist (Jaideep Sahni), in the guise of giving the much-loved song some street-cred, adds lines such as these: Unche se uncha banda, potty pe baithe nanga...
So, arse from elbow.
The first half of Dum Maaro Dum is devoted to lengthy and colourless introductions. Lorry (Prateik Babbar), a cranky school kid, gets admission to an American college. But he can’t go because his family runs a modest bed and breakfast joint. One scoundrel with a tattoo is interested in Lorry’s admission papers, so he seduces him with the help of a happy Brazilian babe. He’ll pay $15,000 if Lorry carries drugs to the US. Hum, haw and Lorry agrees. Lorry is at the airport when he runs into ACP Vishnu Kamath (Abhishek Bachchan). We go into flashback to be introduced to ACP Kamath. A dare-devil narcotics cop who once wasn’t averse to taking bribes, the ACP is now anti-drugs because of a serious familial tragedy. Posted to Goa to clean up the drugs mess, he enlists two local cops — Rane (Govind Namdeo) and Mercy de Costa (Gantois Gomes) — in his war on drugs. They brief him about the Russians, Israelis, Nigerians, British and French cartels, as well as Goa’s top businessman and drug lord, Lorsa Biscuta (Aditya Pancholi).
ACP Kamath gets into action while singing a rap song. He raids trucks, hotels and bans rave parties.
Drugs, you see, don’t sell without rave parties, so the peddlers are stuck with plastic packets worth `970 crores. All rush to Lorsa and he assures them that Michael Barbosa will settle the matter. ACP Kamath has heard of this Barbosa once too often and decides to go after him. But no one has seen Barbosa, ever. ACP tries hard, even indulges in some illegal, adult action that involves one Pedro, one pichwaada, one gun and one condom. But there’s still no sign of Barbosa.
Cut to the present. The drugs trail has led the ACP to the airport, to a quaking, sweating Lorry and his plastic packets. Just as Lorry is being taken away, one singer Joki (Rana Daggubati) arrives to tell the ACP that Lorry is innocent. Immediately we travel back in time to see how happy Joki was with his sexy girlfriend Zoe (Bipasha Basu). But Zoe wanted to fly and Lorsa helped her. Zoe now lives with Lorsa and snorts cocaine.
Back to the present. Joki joins the cops in their hunt for Barbosa. But soon, one cop is dead and then one girlfriend. Lorsa, now shifty and angry, throws a rave party where the potty song is danced to. No Barbosa still, but ACP Kamath, who has been reading Lorry’s statement, suddenly has an epiphany. Things, however, don’t go too well for him and there is still no Barbosa. The film now takes a long, winding route and by the time we figure stuff, happy hours are over and the world seems a very dull place.

WHAT WASRohan Sippy thinking? What did he want from us? To hate Goa? To love ACP Kamath? To find his film thrilling? There’s no real story here. The director probably had an idea, about shooting a film in Goa where there will be women — desi and phirang — in bikini tops and thongs, snorting cocaine and dancing to bad music. Into this he threw in some goondas, some light on the Goa drug mafia’s organogram, and then ordered a screenplay, on the lines of “he came, he saw, he went thain-thain”.
Sippy has adequate skills to turn Goa into the new Nepal — land of drugs, foreigners, paedophiles, casual sex and murders — and he even organised sufficiently crass dialogue and a couple of interesting scenes. But his war on drugs and drug-wallas is non-committal. And, like his story, his action is lame, especially because it is assigned to deadpan male actors playing dreary, single-note characters. The women characters are duller.
Bipasha Basu looks very toned and nice, but the quality of men she has to loll in bed with is steadily deteriorating. Prateik Babar is a big letdown, as is Rana Daggubati.
Govind Namdeo is his usual self and gets to shout his favourite word — ghanta. Aditya Pancholi, who plays Lorsa, is infinitely creepier in his pictures in glossies. Gantois Gomes is good.
Abhishek Bachchan’s ACP Kamath, I read somewhere, is being “equated with Inspector Vijay” of Zanjeer. Which raving lunatic is making this comparison? If Inspector Vijay were to find ACP Kamath in his thana, he would kick his chair, grit his teeth and caution, “Jab tak baithne ko na kaha jai sharafat se khade raho. Yeh police station hai, tumhare baap ka ghar nahin”.