Are you ready to endure two dozen noisy characters for one underplayed Salman Khan? If the answer is yes, ‘Ready’ is the film for you.
Salman Khan almost gets into real-life role-play as Prem Kapoor, the most eligible bachelor in a ‘Hum Saath Saath Hain’ kind of extended joint family. Enter Sanjana (Asin), a runaway bride who poses as a prospective daughter-in-law in the Kapoor clan. Anees Bazmee’s fascination for keeping the audiences hanging on and his actors suspended from hilltops continues as Sanjana and Prem ‘fall’ in love.
But Sanjana is sandwiched between two ham-burger uncles (Akhilendra Mishra, Sharat Saxena) who are behind her ancestral assets. Prem befriends the chartered accountant (Paresh Rawal) common to both uncles, to get close to their families. Bazmee almost revisits his earlier film ‘Welcome,’ as Prem goes on a family furbishing mode by taming the rowdy ruffians and reuniting the separated siblings in their sixties.
The screenplay is adapted in fast-food format with clichéd conflicts and so many characters that you lose count after a point of time. Understanding the character correlations is a task that could even baffle the sanest. The director keeps his task simple by sticking to his brand of loud comedy, over-the-top acts, caricatured characters and silly slapstick.
The first half involves running around the trees while the actual story starts only in the second half. The graph of the narrative does pick up somewhere in the second half but the tempo falls intermittently thanks to the convoluted writing and the protracted proceedings. By the time the film reaches its melodramatic high-voltage climax giving Salman simulated scope to go topless, it leaves you exasperated.
The entire villain tribe is unusually unkempt and intentionally irritating. The sidetrack of the pampered spoilt grandson (Mohit Baghel) being subjugated by Salman’s buffoonery is annoying. Sajid-Farhad’s dialogues don’t elevate the humour much and when Salman expresses romance with lines like ‘main kutta hoon, yeh kutiya hain’, you know the film is going to the dogs. The music is inspired and the action has impact though thankfully not overdone.
Salman Khan looks suave, has smashing screen presence and seems in his comfort zone employing his standard set of dancing, acting and action skills. Quite unusual of him, he underplays his role in the second half and does a decent job at it. Asin looks good and shares comfortable chemistry with Salman. Mahesh Manjrekar, as a person who is at loss of words, reprises almost the same kind of character that Suniel Shetty played a decade back in ‘Awara Pagal Deewana’. Paresh Rawal is regular. Standup comedian Sudesh Lahiri gets the funniest scenes. Arya Babbar is reduced to a junior artist. Amidst cameos, one wonders what Chunky Pandey was doing in the film? If you are still ready to not see beyond Salman Khan in the film, ‘Ready’ is the film for you!
