De Taali Movie Reviews

Dim some, lose some. Practically every man, woman and even a dear golden-fur dog here is brain-challenged. One guy breakdances on the Bangkok streets (no one stops to watch, he’s that bad), another quaffs single malts at 8 am (no one gives him soda). And a girl smiles so widely that she could eat a banana (or two) sideways. Really.

Director Eshwar Niwas has taken the done-to-death premise of love being right under your nose, best friends making the best partners, and the threat of the other woman by infusing De Taali with irreverence, amusing set ups and eking out the best from his cast.

De Taali, as director E Niwas puts it, is a crazy roller coaster ride about three friends, a world where life is defined by friendship and love. And the film deserves its taalis. We are introduced to three friends -- Paglu (Riteish Deshmukh), Abhi (Aftab Shivdasani) and Amu (Ayesha Takia ) -- who swear by each other.

THE funniest line of the film comes as a graffiti scrawled on the friendship wall. 'Amu is a Boy,' is boldly scrawled on the walls of the tree house by the trio of friends which includes Abhi (Aftab Shivdasani), Paglu (Riteish Deshmukh) and Amu (Ayesha Takia). Obviously Amu is the archetypal one-of-the-boys girls in this backslappers club, despite her two plaits and her red nails.

If you've watched the promos of DE TAALI, you'd expect a film with tremendous youth power. You'd expect gags, gimmicks, laughter-n-sunshine and lots and lots of fun. But DE TAALI is anything but this! On the contrary, it's a slow-paced love story, which depicts one of the actors as a modern-day Devdas who hits the bottle when his girlfriend walks out on him.

The funniest moment in this sporadically amusing outing into an ouch slouch is when all torture fails to intimidate the kidnap victim Rimi Sen. Then Riteish Deshmukh fishes out a copy of Ram Gopal Varma's Aag. Then the kidnap victim screams in anticipated agony.