Paying Guests –Bollywood Movie Review

Cast :

Shreyas Talpade, Javed Jaffrey, Aashish Chaudhary, Celina Jaitley, Sayali Bhagat, Riya Sen, Vatsal Seth, Neha Dhupia, Johny Lever, Chunkey Pandey, Asrani , Paintal , Delnaz Paul, Viju Khote, Vida Samadzai

Crew

Publicity Designer: P9 Designs

Story Writer: Paritosh Painter

Director: Paritosh Painter

Producer: Raju Farooqui

A madcap caper crammed with childish gags by men in drag, Paying Guests is a film full of humour that is crass, and leaves you with a sore pain in the …err…seat.

So, here’s a shot at comedy by a man who’s directed a number of plays. Paritosh Painter apparently adapts a successful play into a ‘comedy’ about four guys going out of their way, and gender, to get an accommodation as paying guests.

Shreyas Talpade , Ashish Choudhary and Javed Jaffrey are three friends in Pattaya (Thailand) who incidentally lose their jobs on the same day. Even before the three begin to pull themselves out of the uninvited misery, arrives Vatsal Seth , an uninvited cousin from India to find a job in Thailand.

To drown their sorrow the friends have a drink too much and are kicked out of their house as well by the grumpy landlord ( Asrani ).

Homeless and jobless, they eventually see the hope of getting a new accommodation with a landlord ( Johnny Lever ) who wants only married couples as paying guests.

You don’t need to be a Kurosawa to figure out what happens next. Two of the four friends decide to dress up as women.

While men dressed up as women frustrate you with their over-the-top antics, the real women ( Neha Dhupia , Celina Jaitley , Sayali Bhagat and Riya Sen ) have roles shorter than their clothes. The script seems like a series of slapstick jokes strung together to camouflage the holes in the plot. The humour, which borders on mockery rather than wit, is too deliberate and forced at places. And the climax (in a theatre play) seems shamelessly inspired from the climax of Kundan Shah’s gem of a movie ‘Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron’.

Ashish Choudhary and Shreyas Talpade manage to carry the movie on their performances to some extent. Javed Jaffery and Johnny Lever are fuhad, to use a vernacular. Vatsal Seth doesn’t look convincing cracking a joke while Asrani is wasted in a minute role.

In a small nutshell, the film’s a drag!

Paying Guests Trailer :