De Dena Dun

Medium : Hindi
Starring : Akshay Kumar, Sunil Shetty, Katrina Kaif, Sameera Reddy
Director : Priyadarshan
Music : Pritam, Salim-Sulaiman

Since a month before, the trailer of the film 'Den Dana Dun' is being showed in theaters. The film produced by big music banner, Venus has got a big star cast. The majority scenes are shown in the comedy background and most of them reminds us of the sequences which came in a malayalam film before. When I looked for the director's name, my assumption became right. It was none other than Priyadarshan, the director who holds the record for giving maximum remake subjects. More over the majority scenes were taken from his own malayalam film, 'Vettam'.

To watch a remake subject is not an interesting task. Only thing you can do is to compare and analyze the current version with the older one. The 60+ films old director had got an immense experience in recreating projects from different languages; he starts such an experimenting from the days of 'Boeing Boeing' and 'Thaalavattom' itself. and that too from the English. With some curiosity, I entered the theater to watch how an average film like 'Vettam' has been remade in hindi.

To my surprise, here the hero (Akshay Kumar) is shown as a servant of a rich woman (Konika). He has not even got a place in the house like her pet dog who is being treated like a close relative of her. After suffering a lot, the decides to commit suicide(?). On the other side, his friend (Sunil Shetty) is shown struggling for his livelihood. Both of them had made a plan to kidnap the dog in lieu of a big amount of money. The plan works and they kidnapped the dog, but it escaped from them and reached back the owner. Since the servant is missing, the lady thinks that he is being kidnapped and investigation goes in that way. The culprits decided to stay in a hotel, their lovers also reaches there. The rest of the portions of the film happens in the particular hotel, where all the characters assembles. It later on leads to utter confusion and misunderstandings(like the situations in 'Vettam'), after a tension prevailed climax all are happy.

The marriage celebrations of one of the heroines happens in the hotel. At the same hotel, the two heroes and the other heroine decided to stay. A professional killer reaches there as a part of his mission to kill one of the important members in the bride's party. A womanizer also reaches the hotel. A police officer comes in search of the bridegroom's father, who has been involved in many cheating cases. A girl who involves in the prostitution, reaches there to meet her customer and to collect money. An underworld don and his gang reaches there with a dead body as per request from one of the heroes to do some fowl play. What will happen if these characters are shuffled and get involved in the misunderstanding situations. Here almost all the characters are indirectly or accidentally linked with each other. Other than the actors in lead roles, here you have got a bulk number of artists like Paresh Ravel, Tinu Anand, Shakti Kapoor, Johny Lever, Rajpal Yadav, Chunkey Pandey, Sharat Saxena, Asrani, Neha Dupia etc etc. Thus the confusions and complexity shown in 'Vettam' is being doubled here.

The opening scenes in which the hero narrating his story is adapted from some of the director's own projects which came in malayalam in the 80's. A scene from 'Mannar Mathayi Speaking' and 'Ee Parakkum Thalika' is taken as it is by the director here. The climax water sequences reminds the film 'Titanic'. Akshay Kumar was more flexible in some of the films he done recently, but here he was not so impressive as before. Lady with very less expressions in her face, Katrina Kaif has done the role in her usual way. Many experienced supporting actors placed in the film had proved their talent to their maximum through the comedy sequences. In the climax, the servant walking through the water with many glasses in his hand is an avoidable situation.

Cinematographer from south, who did films like 'Vettam', 'Kanthasamy' and E', Ekaambaram has done a neat job behind the lenses. Art director Sabu Cyril did some miniature jobs and visual effects for the climax portions. Another malayalee in the chief technical crew is Arun Kumar, the editor of the film. Songs by Pritam were not impressive, but the busy musicicans, Salim-Sulaiman managed to keep the tempo through their background score.


'De Dena Dun' has got endless comic situations involving too many chaos and confusions. If you like such kind of comedy films, then you can also have a 'forced' time pass here; (those who have seen films like 'Pyar Tho Hona Hi Tha' and 'Vettam', please keep distance!!!).


Rating : 6 / 10