Subhash K. Jha speaks about Daddy Cool 
By Subhash K. Jha, August 29, 2009 - 12:15 IST
Why remake a shoddy, tasteless British comedy with enough scataological satire to attire a miniature village of zombies and ogres? Why be so fixated on Western entertainment when we've so much literary and pulp talent out here?
Just leave aside these vital questions and focus on the ensemble cast that sparkles with a borrowed wit. The Goan setting and the quaint rooms housing distraught emotions keep us smiling.
The setting is a Christian funeral. At times the funereal jokes have us coffin…I mean coughing in embarrassment. The dead man's (Sharad Saxena, deadly in his stillness) two sons are a responsible young bespectacled householder (Shetty) and a carefree Casanova novelist (Ashish Chowdhry, suitably rakish) who flies in jetlagged just in time for Daddy Cool's funeral.
Daddy has a secret in his closet. And that's Rajpal Yadav, a pintsized lover. "Isska matlab tum dono gay ke bete ho," squeals Aarti Chabria to her screen-husband Suneil Shetty and his kid brother Ashish. Ouch, oops, whoa!!
Well well, political correctness is all about loving your funeral, no matter what it takes. Ironically after copying everything in sight in the original from from the characters to the dialogues, the desi adaptors get cold feet and decide the gay lover was an imposter.
And Section 377 lived happily after.
To be fair to this fearfully feisty farce Daddy Cool makes you smile specially Aftab Shivdasani as a drugged-out goofy lover-boy. He is better than the actor who played the role originally.
Suneil Shetty as the 'responsible' man a little tired of shouldering family responsibilities but nonetheless determined to see the show through, is controlled and comically karmic. His climactic speech in praise of his father is rousing. Rajpal Yadav as the gay' lover is superbly restrained. And then there's Sophie Chowdhary as a suitably sexy airhead in a stabbed-out red dress ready to sleep with any man in a black suit as long as she gets her way.
Blessedly this farce doesn't opt for desperate measures. It keeps it...er cool most of the way.
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"I play a judge with sex on the mind" - Chunky Pandey
