Thank You 2011 Movie Review

Okay, now here's the first biggie of the season. Major studio, super-successful director, mega budget, ensemble star cast, lotsa glitz-n-glam... Besides, after the stupendous success of films like WELCOME and SINGH IS KINNG, the Akshay Kumar - Anees Bazmee jodi teams up for the third time, promising to complete a hat-trick of enjoyable laughathons. The expectations, therefore, are humungous.

There's talk that THANK YOU is an extension of SHAADI NO. 1, NO ENTRY and MASTI, besides the Hollywood film THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH. The commonality is that all these films talk of philandering husbands and extra-marital affairs. But THANK YOU is more of a cat-n-mouse game between philandering husbands and a detective, incidentally hired by both the sides - the husbands as well as the wives. Lots of scope for humor and fun moments, right?

Bazmee has successfully followed the magic mantra over the years: Garnish light moments with spice [sex], gloss [panoramic locales], a bit of pulsating action and of course, hip-swinging music. Sprinkle gags and punches. Throw logic out of the window. Pack a number of stars in the enterprise. Voilà! The recipe for a paisa vasool entertainer is ready.


But THANK YOU is as inconsistent as the roads of Mumbai. Sometimes, the ride is as smooth as silk. But there are times when one encounters potholes aplenty during the course of this journey. In fact, like GAME last Friday, the two halves of THANK YOU are as diverse as chalk and cheese. While the first hour of THANK YOU is thoroughly enjoyable and you genuinely feel that Bazmee is in his element, the second hour - which should've been superior - is agonizing and intolerable. The writing goes topsy-turvy in this hour, so much so that when you exit the auditorium, it's not with a smile, but a smirk.

Like Bazmee's last endeavor NO PROBLEM, THANK YOU also suffers due to weak writing [screenplay: Bazmee, Rajiv Kaul, Ikram Akhtar, Nisar Akhtar and Rajan Agarwal], especially in its post-interval portions. What compounds the problem is that while the on-screen characters try too hard to make you laugh, you just don't react. The jokes are bland and the situations the three husbands land up in are far from funny. By the time the story reaches its conclusion, the viewer is already exhausted.