Daddy Cool - Movie Review

Cast: Suniel Shetty, Aashish Choudhary, Aftab Shivdasani, Javed Jaafery, Chunkey Panday, Aarti Chabbria, Kim Sharma, Rajpal Yadav, Prem Chopra, Vrajesh Hirjee, Sophie Choudhary

Director: K Murali Mohan Rao

Rating: **

Music: Raghav Sachar

During my brief conversation with one of the actors of ‘Daddy Cool’, good old Javed Jaafery, he had claimed that this film would be as funny, or probably funnier, than ‘Dhamaal’. Not that ‘Dhamaal’ is my favourite film script-wise, but it did make most people laugh like crazy (including me). Also, the kind of promotions for ‘Daddy Cool’ had sort of raised expectations quite a bit. But alas! ‘Daddy Cool’ is nowhere near ‘Dhamaal’ or even half as funny.
 
‘Daddy Cool’ is the remake of the popular British film ‘Death at a Funeral’ which was released in 2007. And it certainly is not the best remake. The director tries to put in some new elements but neither do they work nor the direct references. The characters are too stereotypical. One big issue is the presence of too many characters, some of them not adding up anywhere towards the final conclusion of the story. The director would have done better without them. At least he could have focused on pooling in better lines for the more important characters. For example Javed Jaafery, Sophie Choudhary and Kim Sharma make a completely independent story and could have been kept away from the rest - unless the director had some issues showing smaller family gatherings!
 
‘Daddy Cool’ is the story of a family. Douglas Lazarus, an ex Income Tax officer, dies of heart attack. His elder son Steven (Suniel Shetty) is taking care of his funeral. The younger one, a famous novelist Brian (Aashish Choudhary) is more bothered about his bad flight journey than his father’s death. Their cousin Martha (Tulip) comes in with her fiancé Michael (Aftab) and brother (Chunkey). A model (Sophie) lands up at the mansion by mistake thinking that is where she is supposed to meet her casting director for the ‘casting couch’. Then there is a mysterious short guy (Rajpal Yadav) who wants to tell Steven something important about his father. So many characters are anyway hard to handle. Plus, there is also Carlos (Javed) and his wife (Kim Sharma), an old uncle (Prem Chopra) and Jim (Vrajesh Hirjee) who is in love with Martha. All these characters painfully stretch a tiny story to two long hours.
 
‘Daddy Cool’ is not well-written. It has some clever dialogues which make you laugh but rarely. Aftab is good but his character is overdone. Same is the case with Vrajesh. The film is shot completely indoors and hence there are no extraordinary needs when it comes to the camera work. It looks fine. The background music is good enough. There are no songs in the film, saving you that much trouble!
 
Performances are pretty good. Suniel Shetty is good especially towards the final moments when the film takes an emotional turn. Aashish Choudhary and Chunkey Panday are good too. Rajpal is a highlight. The girls hardly have anything to do.
 
Overall, ‘Daddy Cool’ is a complete disappointment. It certainly is not the film you would like to watch if you are in mood for great laughs; neither does it have anything new for you to experiment with it.