It's a good thing that the ToI finished their city survey before Golmaal 3 was released, or else all of Bangalore would have scored a zero on sanitation. For such is the miasma of garbage that emanates from this apology of a movie.
The dog, weirdly named Facebook, puts in the best performance of the film. He drools, chases Mithun on cue, bites his butt when required and generally maintains a suitably consistent expression throughout the film. But he's a dog, and there's not much else he can do with his face.
Unfortunately, there is no excuse for the rest of the cast to follow in his footsteps.
One of the most irritating aspects of this movie is the sameness of expression and action in almost all of the 'comedy' scenes. Even if some of the jokes are new, you get a feeling that you have heard them somewhere before, mainly because the dialogue delivery and facial expressions are so metronomically similar. The chief offender in this regard is of course Johnny Lever. In Golmaal 3, he plays what appears to be a gross caricature of the sum of all his previous roles. This would have been an interesting take on his character, if it wasn't for the fact that all his previous roles are caricatures in themselves.
Throughout, the film is absolutely deluged with references to other films, previous films of this cast and in some cases other actors. This tends to pale after a while and towards the end, becomes downright irritating and of course, predictable. Mithun reprising his Disco Dancer role, complete with song and knock-kneed gyrations, is one of the few exceptions.
The plot, such as it is, is nothing to write home about; indeed if one were to write home with such a plot as this, one would risk being thrown out of home permanently. Set in Goa, it's a melange of various elements: kids (I use the word loosely) not knowing they are adopted, long-lost loves who are their adoptive parents reunited (still virginal after decades, such being the power of their love), kids not getting along with each other until the shocking revelation that they are, indeed, adopted sparks a new-found camaraderie amongst them, several slapstick fight scenes and impromptu songs every now and then.
How this tripe was sustained past the interval is still a mystery, because by the time the slide came on halfway through the film, it felt like I had watched two feature films already. However, the director fearlessly plods on, throwing joke after stale joke at the hapless audience. One scene in particular stands out, and while being one of the few that are remotely funny, again only serves to show how repetitive the structure of the movie is. The newly-wed 'parents' (Mithun and Ratna Pathak Shah) are watching TV while the five boys (Shreyas Talpade, Arshad Warsi, Ajay Devgan, Tusshar Kapoor and Kunal Khemu) are silently squabbling in the background. The first few scenes of "what I will shove up your ass" are genuinely funny, with the nice touch of the victims reacting appropriately to the size, shape or other characteristics of the object being threatened to be shoved. However, even this faint charm quickly pales as the scene is repeated about a dozen times, till the last of its comedic appeal has decomposed into farce.
Kareena Kapoor as the irritating do-gooder with an iron hand in an iron glove (she has a couple of nice lines and almost a fight scene) plays a rare role where she has no romantic interest, save for a brief allusion to some sort of possible dalliance with Devgan. She is seen in several bedroom scenes with Shah and Mithun, the haddi to the ageing kababs. It's no wonder then, that at the end of the film, when the five 'brothers' are finally at peace with each other and she asks "Can I join your gang?" that the word "bang" closely seems to follow.
Special mention must be made here of Tusshar Kapoor, who plays the mute caricature and Talpade who plays the stammering caricature. Both roles insult the real people who suffer from these disorders, but in Tusshar Kapoor's case I was glad that he did not have a proper speaking role, and it is now clear (to me, at least) why he is such an anemone in that sea of minnows called Bollywood.
Overall, this is a film best watched in absentia, by which I mean that if you can pay for the tickets for someone else to go, and sit at home yourself with a cold beer and a nice book, it would be money well spent. I'm going with 1 out of 10 for Golmaal 3, and if there is any talk of Golmaal 4, I will personally free Ajmal Kasab and point him in Rohit Shetty's direction.
