While HUMSHAKALS begins on a promising note -- it's a premise ripe with comic potential -- the graph only spirals southwards barely fifteen minutes into the film. It's not sacrilege to attempt a no-brainer -- the audience loves it -- but the smiles/guffaw/laughter should never be in short supply. With a run time of approx. 2.30 hours, HUMSHAKALS drains you at the end of it, despite the actors putting their best foot forward and trying so so so hard to make you giggle even when the gags are weak. The banal jokes and the lame PJs coupled with the muddled screenplay are clearly responsible for the royal mess.
With its multi-story story, Humshakals must be tightly told. Here, the film wobbles, its first half distractedly meandering with mindless sequences involving comas, electric shocks and Satish Shah as a Hitler-worshipping warden, tormenting patients by showing them Himmatwala. The second half gets tauter and funnier. The result's like a minty chewing gum that's been stretched too long. Shedding 30 minutes and some jaded gags would make Humshakals consistent fun - now, you laugh but also frequently go, ho-hum.
This is a racist, sexist, equal-opportunity offender of a film, which wouldn't have been awful in itself were it not also patently unfunny. Seriously, if you run into anyone who claims to have enjoyed this film, step away slowly. The biggest casualty from this monstrous effort is, in my eyes, Saif Ali Khan, who may well be disowned by friends and family. It's all bad. All of it, every last instant, every single word.
So you thought Sajid Himmatwala Khan could sink no further. Watch just 15 minutes of Humshakals and you'd be disavowed of that notion. Even by the pitiable cinematic standards that the director has so defiantly set for himself, Humshakals is the very pits. It scrapes the bottom of a barrel that seems to have no bottom at all. Humshakals is an execrable comedy of horrors that plumbs the depths of stupidity and crassness. If there is any purpose that this load of unalloyed trash serves, it is simply this: the film proves how delusional Sajid Khan is. He thinks this is cinema. Sorry, Mr. Khan, no matter how much money your film ends up with at the box office, the joke is entirely on you! This one is way beyond. Idiocy is a gentle term for what is unleashed upon us. You can also call it a two-and-a- half hour show reel of plot-less, witless, joylessness. I am all for political incorrectness. Silliness can be great fun. But brainless doesn't have to translate to brain-dead, when it is done with smarts. 'Humshakals' has zero. Even in his really terrible moments, Sajid has managed to come up with one laugh out loud moment. Or two. Here there are none.
Humshakals' central problem isn't the lack of realism, but that it isn't funny. If you're thinking of watching Humshakals, here's a suggestion. Don't do it. There are better things you can do with your money and being swallowed alive by a python is less excruciating than watching Sajid Khan's latest attempt at making a movie.
If Himmatwala was terrible, I have no clue how to rate Humshakals. Sans a scintilla of intelligence, the film begins with a note from Sajid Khan about what a wise man had once said. It seems that Sajid never paid heed to the value of experience, which quite justifies the level of his films. Bereft of wit, the film banks on a convoluted narrative and one mess of a storyline. At 2 hours and 40 minutes, the film is an endurance test which I failed in. If you suck out Ram