Subhash K. Jha talks about One Two Three 
By Subhash K. Jha, March 31, 2008 - 11:15 IST
There's this guy who comes quite early into this wacked-out comedy to serve Sameera Reddy, a car showroom owner, a notice. He smiles and delivers his murderous missive, turns on his heels wears a frown and vanishes.
The thing about Ashwani Dheer's flaky but frequently funny farce is that it's got accomplished comic actors in the smallest of parts. Watch out for the seasoned Marathi actress who plays Tusshar's mother. All she wishes for her son is that he excels in his work, namely killing people. She sends him off on his first murderous spree in Pondicherry (where most of the acned, knock-kneed but never hackneyed action unfolds).
Tusshar ends up at the doorstep of the wrong person, a loud Tamilian scrambled-brained lingerie designer (Esha Deol, cute and loud). Lingerie, or kachcha-banyan, as Paresh Rawal insists on calling them plays a big part in covering up the broadly exposed bases in this situational comedies where the best moments are those that the actors take over from the screenwriter and make their own.
Mukesh Tiwari displaying an unusual penchant for parody (forget the unfunny Buddha Mar Gaya) adding an extra 's' to every English word, is like Rakhi Sawant gone wrong. And Tiwari's two sidekicks have their own subplots. One of them makes bombs that never go off in time.
Luckily 123 gets its timing right most of the time. It's a war of nerves between the writer and the audience, as the one tries to outpace the other. Eventually, the audience does get tired of watching three guys with the same name Laxmi Narayan getting mixed up in situations where the spoken words give nothing, and everything, away. But our fatigue is slackened by the unslackened physical energy that the characters bring to the minutest of moments.
Ashwani Dheer comes from the sitcom culture on television. Nowhere does his framing or shot-taking give away his cramped antecedents. He enjoys the large open spaces that his crowded cast populates with parodic panache pouncing on the preposterousness in the plot with famished energy.
The cast is uniformly in-sync with the director's vision, not allowing the shards of farce to be frittered away unused. The smallest of cast member knows the job on hand. But Suniel Shetty gets as far away from his macho image as humanly possible as the timorous timid proper and punctual Laxmi Narayan on the run with a reined-in enthusiasm. We've seen Suniel do comedy before. But never so straight faced and sharp. He's a surprise.
Tusshar Kapoor as Mama's pet out to make his first kill is extremely accomplished. He labours over the loud comedy and gets the volume right. Paresh Rawal selling lingerie with uninhibited pride is not the outright winner as he usually is in these comedies. Has Paresh got complacent? Or have Suniel, Tusshar and co. got better at the funny stuff?
If only director Dheer had avoided the excessive crudity especially in Suniel's prolonged sequence in the public loo with the cheesy hitman.
"Main nahin pukdunga," he protests in a panic as the other actor (another small-time scene stealer in this festival of interesting actors) reaches into his pants. Panic -attacks dominate the lives of these flustered characters. These lovable losers try to sell lingerie and cars while the director repackages the Shakespearean comedy of errors in a new auto-pilot manoeuvre that doesn't quite have you holding your sides.
But the chuckles don't stop. Shortest role in the history of the comic farce goes to Upen Patel and Tanissha. They come in with a song and go out with a bang. In-between they lose their grip over the giggle trip. Director Ashwani Dheer quits while he's ahead.
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"I had to be very loud in 123" - Esha Deol
