Paying Guests isn’t exactly what the doctor ordered at this time immediately after the producer-multiplex conflict got over, but it serves as a good prelude to the big budget movies following it in the coming weeks, as it will only increase the hunger of the audience to watch a good movie.Mind you, it’s not bad but it’s not good either. It has its funny moments where you jump from your seat laughing but it lacks the style and in some parts the treatment is pathetic. It tries to live up to the style and sleekness of Dostana but fails miserably.
The story revolves around four guys (Shreyas Talpade, Javed Jaffery, Aashish Choudhary, Vatsal Seth), three of whom have been fired from their jobs and have also been asked to vacate the house where they stay as pg’s by the owner Asrani. In their effort to find a place to stay in, they stumble upon a house which is owned by Johnny Lever and Dilnaz Paul, but the catch is that the people staying in the house have to be married. So taking a cue from Ritesh Deshmukh’s performance is Money Hai Toh Honey Hai which is playing besides on the flat screen TV, they get the idea to dress Javed and Shreyas as women and their wives, to get to stay in the flat.
Then follows the story that any slapstick movie would have. Different characters locking horns with each other in every scene and a khichdi of funny experiences is formed.
The chemistry between the guys is something to watch out for. It seems like the scenes between them have been shot without any retakes. There is a scene when all of them are drunk and cursing Asrani and he is standing right behind them, which is one of the funniest scenes in the movie. Shreyas and Javed are natural actors and occupy more screen time than the other two.
The girls don’t have any scope to act as the script is entirely focused on the guys and are merely there for skin show. This again goes to show how male centered most of our movies are. Riya Sen, Celina Jaitly, Sayali Bhagat and Neha Dhupia would have been better off as mannequins than actors in this movie. Riya and Sayali’s dialogue delivery is shoddy and most of the time the girl’s performances are clearly overshadowed by the guys. Ritesh and Javeed playing women seem better off than any of the girls.
The other characters in the movie give a decent performance too. Chunky Pandey plays a stuttering goon, Johnny Lever as his sardar brother and Dilnaz as Jhonny's gujarati wife. Dilnaz’s dialogues have been nicely written and superbly delivered.
The last scene tries to ape the ‘Mahabaharat’ scene in Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, but that kind of genius cannot be repeated, even though this one is fairly funny.
Surprisingly with so many characters in the movie, at no point do you ever feel confused about what’s going on.
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