Hyderabad Nawabs Review

Working on an established concept offers its advantages. Hyderabad Nawabs uses none of them. What it uses are gaalis. And cleavages. And loose morals. So while The Angrez was a good film unfortunately restricted in appeal to people who are essentially Hyderabadi, Hyderabad Nawabs is an unfortunate film restricted in appeal to people who are essentially like its characters.

Yes, if watching The Angrez felt like eating a mutton biriyani at Paradise, Hyderabad Nawabs feels like the mutton pieces have been removed from it and substituted for by soya chunks. The Angrez scored primarily due to creativity in almost every scene, and bountiful laughs. Hyderabad Nawabs uses the same cast, but the things that made that cast so palatable are mostly gone – the director of that one is not even associated with this, that was a cute film while this is a crude adult movie, that one used skin show for merry laughs while this one uses it for ticket sales, and that one was a pure comedy while this one glorifies goons.

Let’s get to the tale – Munna (Mast Ali) is an eve-teaser who does the Women’s College beat trying to pick up women, while his close friend Pappu (Aziz Nasar) sells tickets in black at Ramakrishna. They fall in love with Nazma (Stuti) and Reshma (Vandana), the daughters of Hanif Murgiwala, a butcher.

Hanif wants to get his daughters married to NRIs, and particularly hates these two, who’ve once insult him at a theater. When he gets his daughters engaged to Arif (Raghu) and Anwar (Basha), who he thinks are US-returned but who are in reality just back from serving a 5-year sentence at the Chanchalguda jail, Munna and Pappu ask for the help of Gopal Yadav alias Mamu (RK), the don of Dhoolpet.

Arif and Anwar owe huge money to Ajju Bhai (Hari), the big goon of Mangalhat, and assure him that once they get married to Hanif’s daughters, they will inherit all his savings and pay Ajju off. So when they approach Ajju for help, he agrees, especially since he has an axe to grind against Mamu already. And the film then becomes a face-off between the rival gangs.

The wafer-thin plot is stretched into 150 minutes, but the plot isn’t what you went there for anyway – it was the local flavor and the jokes. The local flavor is very much there, but it’s like a back-alley version of the first film. You have humor being attempted primarily through fulsome use of abuses – “choo…”, “maaka…”, “bhaad…” – much beyond the basic level and cleverly contextual use where it would be funny. It’s like they’re making up for not being able to come up with anything better.

The film also fails on the creative front – it’s not continuously entertaining, and wanes in several places as it progresses too slowly. Most of the times, you are laughing because you came to have fun listening to Hyderabadi lingo on screen, and not because the scenes themselves are hilarious.

The performances are all quite good, especially Munna’s. However, most of the fun is spoilt with an excessive flesh show. It just diverts the attention of viewers – there are lots of other places that they can see cleavages at, they came here to see some local lingo fun. And the film ends up glorifying awaras, liars and goons towards the end, which is bad considering how many are likely to watch this. You just have to leave it at that the film doesn’t take itself seriously.

The only reason you’d watch this is if you didn’t get enough of The Angrez characters.