Starring Irrfan Khan, Arshad Warsi, Rajpal Yadav, Juhi Chawla, Suresh Menon, Rajat Kapoor
Written and Directed by Jaideep Sen
Rating: **

Stand-up comedian Suresh Menon playing one of four psychologically –disturbed protagonists utters barely one word in the film.

"Kidnap!" he stammers to tell his associates that the sweet doctor Juhi Chawla has been whisked away by an assortment of baddies who look like they could do with a spot of training in crime management.

Krazzy 4 is a refreshing if not riveting change from the risqué-driven innuendo-laden ha-ha-thons that have recently infested our theatres with parasitical passion.

This one has a point to make under the barrage of burlesque. And it's all done in the spirit of give and tickle. Cinematographer Ajit Bhat shoots the streets and crowded places of Mumbai to signify the sense of freedom that the four institutionalized heroes feel even in the claustrophobic atmosphere outside the confines of their world within the stone walls.

So who's the crazy one? The guy who thinks we're still living in the era of Gandhian freedom fighters? Or the guy (Rajat Kapoor exuding suave viallainy with a slurpy stealth) who gets his sweet wife kidnapped for political gains?

Good question. And adeptly handled by debutant director Jaideep Sen as long as the audience doesn't ask too many questions about the logistics of four men and a jalopy joyride one not-so-fine-day into intrigue, adventure and crime.

Sen with ample help from writer Ashwani Dheer knows precisely which frontiers to open to ensure the comedy doesn't slip into farce. The initial scenes introducing the characters are well executed. And if the pace doesn't slacken it's because the actors wouldn't let it.

Each of the four main actors invest a certain something beyond the precincts of parody to their characters.

Irrfan Khan as the literate cleanliness freak, Arshad Warsi as the inmate with an anger-management problem, Rajpal Yadav caught in Gandhian time warp and Suresh Menon as the tongue-tied repressed vagrant invest a definite direction to the wacked-out goings-on.

If you persuade a cine buff to choose one from the foursome it would have to be Rajpal who's by now the maestro of mirthful manoeuverings. Watch him give his patriotic mouthfuls to several scumbags in the plot. Rajpal brings the house down.

Agreed some of the plotting and narrative transitions lack finesse. But when have mainstream Hindi films been known for extravagant bouts of finesse?

Amidst the rites of the road movie, the narrative packs in some seriously satirical and sensitive moments. Check out Arshad's scene with his prospective father-in-law. It's a superbly scripted encounter worthy of far more recognition than evident on 'farce'-value.

Or that isolated incident of pathos when the hygiene maniac Irrfan repositions the bindi on his wife's head.

Such moments, delicately drawn and deftly defined get drown in the din of devilish merrymakers on a rampage.

Krazzy 4 moves from one wacked-out adventure to another without sacrificing the sublinear message on the definition of normal behaviour in a social structure that has lost all its sense of proportion and is hurling into mayhem and anarchy.

Laughter, you might want to know, is the only medicine.

Krazzy 4 isn't quite the tonic for our wounded souls. But you can't help giggle at the goings-on specially when the cast is so finely clued into the cult of comicality.

A word on the two controversial item songs. Shah Rukh moves. Hrithik glides. And yes, Irrfan Khan tries to wipe Rakhi Sawant's tattoo clean in her item song.

That's where the laughter of the lewd is dispersed in the innocence of the 'mad'. Krazzy 4 isn't Milos Forman's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.

Priyadarshan did that in Kyun Ki.

Krazzy 4 goes cuckoo in different sometimes endearing strokes.