Naughty At 40 Review

There was a time when crassness and vulgarity (the sarkai lo khatiya type), looked down upon by the classes, and cheered on by the masses, raked in the moolah at the BO. That gave way to the atrocious brazenness on display now, presumably to cater to an era in which 10-year-olds cry foul if they're not being taught to gyrate to Sheila Ki Jawaani and Munni in their dance classes.

Naughty At 40 seems awkwardly stuck between the two phases. Aiming at being a sex comedy - and nowhere near crowd-pullers like No Entry in terms of comic content or production values - and incapable of executing a single joke, the movie is the worst that Govinda has ever acted in. It's tragic, really.

Govinda stars as Happy Singh, a twisted version of his Bhaskar in Partner. Happy Singh, from London, is 40, the son of a rich businessman (Anupam Kher) and successful but, horror of horrors, a virgin. His repressed desires sprout up when he walks in his sleep and heads to strip clubs or feels up strange women.

Distressed at Happy's single-dom, his parents get him married to Gauri (Uvika Chaudhary), an airheaded small-town girl from India who doesn't know about the birds and the bees, and has no clue why men and women marry.

After his wedding, thanks to his sex-starved marriage, he sleeps with a London model who later kindly tells him that her relationship with him was "fun" and that he should take all the love lessons she taught him, and go and teach them to his wife.

Naught At 40 is not just unfunny and tasteless - it's downright boring. The film's humour is all about how the horny Happy, desperate to get some action, gets nowhere.

This jokes, some delivered by the matchless Shakti Kapoor and Harish, are about as funny as a burning orphanage. There's a condom joke that is totally unexplored, but that could have added some action to the proceedings.

Govinda looks tired, and his trademark dialogue delivery and comic timing look like a truck ran over them. Uvika Chaudhary acts as silly as her character is written to be. The entire cast does an okay job in what is an atrociously lame script plagued by bad jokes.

For those who care, the cinematography is below average, and so is the music.

Skip this firmly.