We walked in to Sapna theatre with all our apprehensions in place, all the while questioning our motives behind pushing the limits of our sanity for the sake of our readers. The eternal optimists that we are, we looked at the sizeable crowd that had gathered, and thought that this might not be all that bad.
Then, we spotted a life-size poster with the film's hero, whose name isn't printed on it, and two men who we presume are his "fans", whose names are printed on it. We were impressed that the hero even had fans, and let our hopes go slightly higher.
And then the movie began.
The film features two protagonists, Ali (Murali) and Kishan (Krishna), jobless Old City boys who do nothing but loiter around all day. The two convince Pasha Bhai to invest one lakh rupees in a shady land deal which goes sour.
Now these three are on the run from moneylenders, when they come upon Masood Ali, an ISI agent (yes, we've moved on from local goons to ISI agents now), who is planning bomb blasts in Hyderabad. Masood Ali is in league with Narsing Yadav, Rauf Lala and Bhikshu Yadav, three local goons. How our protagonists foil the terror plot and save the city, and get the prize money of a million rupees, forms the plot.
The movie is a comedy of errors - totally unintentional comedy and glaring errors, we mean. The ridiculousness of the plot is rivaled only by the silliness of the actors. The two leads look and act worse than the extras in a Z-grade Bollywood movie. They were obviously circus performers or something, as is evident from their stick-whirling skills displayed in a baraat scene. They scream their lungs out, and speak fake Hyderabadi, which is painful to hear.
The script is laughable. In the film, the police commissioner prints an ad in all newspapers, requesting information on the ISI agent. Our heroes, after spotting the guy in a bar, go to the commissioner and tell him that they've seen the terrorist, and that they will nab him. The commissioner, instead of asking for more information, tells them to go ahead and catch the terrorist.
Also, the makers seem to have found only one woman in all of Hyderabad. The heroine (if we can call her that) runs a shop in the Old City, is the PA of Narsing Yadav (the goon apparently needs a PA), and also dances in a bar (because of "financial problems").
All the actors keep screaming and repeating their lines four or five times, without any reason. Random scenes and people keep popping in and out. The comedy is totally non-existent, with neither the lines nor the situations being funny. For instance, in the climax, the inspector walks in, asks everyone to wait, declares that he eats a banana after biryani, eats a banana, and then announces "You're under arrest". This, when a dreaded ISI agent, with a reward of a million rupees on his head, is on the loose in the bar. We have no idea who found that funny, but we did not.
Expecting us to write about the direction or production values, or music, or other technical aspects in this movie, would be utter cruelty that we know our readers would not subject us to.
There comes a time when you just give up, when abject surrender is the only way out. That is when go ahead and watch Do Nawab Hyderabad Ke. If you are not, head to the better releases this week.