Chaos and comedy fit together snugly – this truism held for Rishab Seth’s witty demonetisation send-up Cash (2021) and keeps his new movie from being a damp squib.
The Hindi-language Dhoom Dhaam is the potentially explosive meeting of incompatible states: a fake blushing bride and a genuinely inhibited groom, the expectations from an arranged marriage versus the realities of it. The nuptials between Koyal (Yami Gautam Dhar) and Veer (Pratik Gandhi) proceed per plan, but little else does.
Even before the couple can get to know each other, Sathe (Eijaz Khan) and Bhide (Pavitra Sarkar) barge in, waving guns and demanding the handover of Charlie. In the pursuit of Charlie, Koyal and Veer will hop into and off trains and automobiles.
Veer will learn things about Koyal that were not apparent to him. Koyal will find out more about Veer, a veterinarian who is vegetarian because he refuses to eat his patients.
There is enough sharp humour in Dhoom Dhaam, which is out on Netflix, to qualify as a comedy. More entertaining than Koyal’s true side is what Veer’s buttoned-up persona reveals. The couple’s experience, which takes place over one night within what appears to be a tiny patch of Mumbai, lacks neither activity nor enthusiasm. But missing are high energy and wild imagination.
Although Dhoom Dhaam comes up with many excuses to show its main actors as never seen before, some of the thunder of the 2023 production has been stolen by their previous assignments. Yami Gautam Dhar has already played a cussing-friendly agent in Uri: The Surgical Strike and Article 370, while Pratik Gandhi has been far more manic in Madgaon Express.
Yet, they have never shared the screen, and they relish the opportunity. Written by Aditya Dhar, Aarsh Vora and Rishab Seth, the 108-minute movie is most comfortable in the company of its leads, who are hungry for more mayhem than the script can dream up.
The cast includes Garima Yagnik as Koyal‘s friend, Kavin Dave as Veer’s relative and Mukul Chadda as the police officer who reveals the mystery behind Charlie. Dhoom Dhaam canters along where it should have been racing headlong. The film passes muster as an unorthodox union of opposites thrown together by contrivance and rescued by a shared survival instinct.
