MAALAMAL WEEKLY

Name: Maalamal Weekly
Starring: Paresh Rawal, Om Puri, Ritesh Deshmukh, Rajpal Yadav, Reema Sen.
Rating: ***

If you have come to the multiplex imagining another laughter-coaster from Priyadarshan on the lines of Hera Pheri and Hulchul............well, you might be tad disappointed. Though from the same stable and ably cast with stalwarts like Paresh Rawal, Om Puri and Shakti Kapoor (Yes, they managed to rope him in too !!)...this lacks the energy, the humor and the slickness of Hera Pheri and Hulchul.

The story of a smalltime village, which was struck for years in a drought leading to the entire village land and the villagers coming under the control of the village Thakurayin...another first, as a woman is shown to be the cruel moneylender here.

Paresh Rawal plays a lottery ticket seller, who sells tickets in the hope of the 10% commission he would take from the winner, should someone win.

And one day someone does...and not a small amount, but Rs.1 crore. This might not seem much to us given that news channels are belting out crores as prizes for various competitions...but for a village where a rupee goes a mile and you have to buy your drinking water ... 1 crore is a reversal of fortunes.

Unfortunately, the prize winner..the village drunkard dies of shock at winning this huge amount...and Paresh Rawal decided to recieve the prize on his behalf....and thereon commences the laugh ride as he tries to keep the money to himself and one by one the villagers find out about the lottery and want a share of the king's ransom.

The moral of the story remains that greed does not get you anywhere...though in their case it ultimately did !!

The highlight of Priyadarshan's movies - Hera Pheri and now Maalamal Weekly - is that his scripts and movies make the conventional formula of a hero-heroine passe...he manages to entrall his audience with a story woven around characters and not actors..and not conventions.

However, the movie did drag on endlessly in the middle..and could've done with some trimming - half and hour shorter and the movie would have been a great experience.

All in all..a movie worth watching...but then not an exceptional movie.