Bollywood turns to Follywood in this slapstick tale of three young husbands fed up with their nagging wives. Planning to swap their "bland lentil curry" homelife for some spicy chicken biryani on the side, Meet (Vivek Oberoi), Amar (Ritesh Deshmukh), and Prem (Aftab) want to change their bedroom droops into firm salutes by finding willing mistresses. A sex comedy/Bollywood musical, Masti bears an uncanny resemblance to a sniggering Carry On movie with added bhangra, but fewer laughs.
Originally entitled Khujli (Itch) - but changed to save the blushes of family audiences - this bright and breezy romp still has plenty of nudge-nudge wink-wink humour. Full of the brightly coloured fashions of a Bollywood GAP ad, it boasts a good-looking cast who appear to have been handpicked for maximum eye-candy potential. Playing opposite the male leads are the stunning Tara Sharma, Genelia D'Souza, Amrita Rao, and Lara Dutta - hormonal heaven for teenage boys.
"RANDY ANTICS QUICKLY BECOME TIRESOME"
Equally adolescent, though, is the script itself. Our heroes may just want to have a little "masti" (fun), but their randy Three Stooges antics quickly become tiresome. Dragging the film's overblown running time into tedious territory, the paper-thin plot throws in blackmail, a corpse, a gang of burglars, and a WWF-obsessed mother-in-law ("Here comes the pain") along with India's answer to Dirty Harry (Ajay Devgan). Not even the glossy sales pitch for a Masti life of sex, shopping, and promiscuity can save it from itself.
With few song and dance numbers to alleviate the never-ending stream of fnarr-fnarr humour, director Indra Kumar simply piles on the risqué gags with dubious results. The skit in which Amar mistakenly dates a pre-op transsexual, then spends the next five minutes in the bathroom swilling mouthwash and throwing up is ugly enough, but the running gag in which all three husbands are mistaken for gay men is offensively crass. Sometimes you really can overdo the spice.
Masti (2004)
