Dhol
- Director
- Priyadarshan
- Studio
- Percept Picture Company
- Release Date
- 20 September 2007
- Running Time
- 145 min
- Language
- Hindi
- Country
- India
- Budget
- ₹14.00 Cr
- Box Office
- ₹23.27 Cr
Review
Rajpal Yadav's *Dhol* is an uneven comedy that stumbles more often than it succeeds, yet possesses enough moments of genuine humor and heart to justify its modest box office performance. The film's central premise—four bumbling protagonists chasing wealth through matrimony—is hardly original, but the director manages to extract some laughs from the physicality of his leads and their chaotic misadventures. However, the narrative becomes increasingly muddled once it pivots toward mystery and crime; the transition from lighthearted scheming to kidnapping and gang violence feels jarring and poorly integrated. Abhishek Bachchan and the supporting cast do their best with one-dimensional characters, but even their earnest efforts cannot salvage the uneven pacing and derivative humor that dominate the screenplay.
What saves *Dhol* from being a complete misfire is its refusal to take itself seriously—the film knows it is silly, and there is a certain charm in that self-awareness. The comedic set pieces involving mistaken identities and the characters' desperation have occasional moments of genuine levity, and the film's treatment of its working-class protagonists, while formulaic, carries a mild affection. Yet the second half's introduction of serious criminal elements and the contrived resolution betray the lighter tone established earlier. The cinematography is serviceable, the songs are forgettable, and the pacing suggests a director uncertain whether he is making a comedy or a th
Storyline
So basically, there are these four guys living together in Pune who are total slackers—they all want to get rich without putting in any real work. They keep trying all these sketchy schemes to make quick money, but everything just blows up in their faces. Things get pretty desperate, so they borrow a bunch of cash from one of their uncles at crazy interest rates, thinking the best way to suddenly become wealthy is to marry someone loaded. Lucky for them, this gorgeous rich girl named Ritu shows up in their area, and all four of them immediately decide she's their ticket to easy street.
Here's where it gets interesting—Ritu's actually in town because she's trying to figure out what happened to her brother, who died under mysterious circumstances. All the guys are busy trying to win her over and impress her with their fake personas, and they slowly realize her brother's death is connected to his friend and some serious criminal business. One of them, Pankaj, actually plans to marry her, but before they can go through with it, Ritu discovers that these dudes have been completely full of it the whole time, just pretending to be someone they're not. She gets pretty angry and starts keeping her distance from all of them.
Then things take a wild turn when this dangerous gang leader named Zikomo catches up with them and grabs Ritu along with her grandparents. He's demanding they hand over some kind of drum that's supposedly worth all this trouble—apparently it's the same object that got Ritu's brother into hot water with Zikomo in the first place. The four guys are suddenly in way over their heads and have to figure out how to save Ritu and her family from this mess they never saw coming.
