{"id":708,"date":"2007-12-21T10:06:00","date_gmt":"2007-12-21T10:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/2007\/12\/review-dhan-dhana-dhan-goal-2.html"},"modified":"2011-06-13T02:40:19","modified_gmt":"2011-06-13T02:40:19","slug":"review-dhan-dhana-dhan-goal-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/2007\/12\/review-dhan-dhana-dhan-goal-2.html","title":{"rendered":"Review : Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rating : Poor (0.5\/5)
Genre : Action \/ Sports \/ Drama
Year : 2007
Running time : 2 hours 45 minutes
Director : Vivek Agnihotri
Cast : John Abraham, Arshad Warsi, Boman Irani, Raj Zutshi, Bipasha Basu,<\/p>\n

DHAN DHANA DHAN GOAL (DDDG) : NO GOALS SCORED !
<\/strong>
There aren\u2019t that many Bollywood-ian sports flicks. In fact I can name only two \u2013 Lagaan and Chak de India!<\/a> Now I don\u2019t play or watch cricket or hockey, but guess what ? These films were enjoyable ! Not so the recent addition to the sports stable \u2013 DDDG. You think sports and you think action. I mean they\u2019ll do something, right ? They do, they do, but it\u2019s boring nevertheless. And extremely painful to watch.<\/p>\n

Arshad Warsi is Shaan, a desi restaurant owner with a passion for soccer. Thus he makes every effort to rev up his soccer team Southall United to victory. The team has no resources, no coach, and a desi commentator Johnny Bakshi and city councilwoman Anne are after the land of their soccer club. Shaan manages to get Tony Singh, a yesteryear player with a tarnished reputation as coach, and Tony in turn manages to lure first-class player Sunny Bhasin (John) to Southall United. Slowly the tide begins to turn . . .<\/p>\n

But man, oh man, is it boring watching this tide thingy ! Ever watched grass grow ? Quite similar. The story is the oft-repeated under-dog one. Not that I have problems with that \u2013 Lagaan and CD were under-dog stories too. But the treatment was way, way different. I mean there\u2019s the under-dog and he has an uphill battle. That\u2019s a given, yeah ? Now you\u2019d better like the under-dog and root for him, or else the whole exercise is pointless. And that\u2019s the major flaw in DDDG \u2013 the under-dogs really are a bunch of losers, and not even remotely likeable, forget about rooting for them.<\/p>\n

What comes across in the film is the director\u2019s narrow point of view. The film is full of old, tired clich\u00e9s about \u201cgoras\u201d, and \u201cbetraying your community\u201d, and not fitting in. It\u2019s the whole \u201cUs\u201d and \u201cThem\u201d deal, and I didn\u2019t get it. Who\u2019s \u201cUs\u201d ? The desis who CHOOSE to live in Britain ? Who\u2019s \u201cThem\u201d ? All the \u201cwhite folk\u201d ? And we assume that all of \u201cThem\u201d are racist and bigoted ? I\u2019m not saying racism and bigotry don\u2019t exist, but trying to paint all of \u201cThem\u201d with one broad brush is not just asinine, it\u2019s immature. It smacks of the mindset of a director who can\u2019t get over his Lagaan hang-up. As an immigrant I\u2019m not sure who the target audience of the film really is. The desis in India won\u2019t identify with this bunch, and I\u2019m not sure if I will. If you live outside India, if the UK is your adopted country, I\u2019d assume some loyalty to the land where you live and whose citizens your kids are. If you can\u2019t fit into where you choose to live, you have bigger problems than just soccer woes.<\/p>\n

The other major flaw (Ah ! You thought there was just one, hmm ?) is the listless depiction of soccer. Let\u2019s see, was it \u2013 thrilling ? No. Interesting ? No. Well-paced ? No. Did I care ? No. All I wanted was for this film to end. A sports film hinges upon . . er, sports. If you can\u2019t get the sporting action right, half the battle is lost right there. Seriously, I have as much of a clue about soccer as I have about hockey. But I really enjoyed all the matches in \u201cChak de\u201d, because they had everything DDDG soccer games didn\u2019t. Because you rooted for the \u201cChak de\u201d girls \u2013 they had sass, guts, integrity and loyalty. They knew who they were and they knew where they stood. Unfortunately, the soccer guys don\u2019t. And they can\u2019t kick ball. Or ass.<\/p>\n

Much of the blame for the film\u2019s failure can be attributed to poor scripting. Half-baked characters do no one any good. Least of all fine actors like Arshad Warsi<\/a>, who makes the best of what he\u2019s given. Boman Irani is a pretty good actor too, but his performance can only be described as over-wrought in this film. Bipasha\u2019s role of a doctor who\u2019s balancing out her brother\u2019s patriarchal views regarding women, with her desire to jump John is plain unbelievable. John has cut his hair, and does fairly OK, except for his discordant accent. I mean, wouldn\u2019t you expect a British born and bred guy to have a British accent ? The only character who seemed just right was that of Arshad Warsi\u2019s British-born wife. The rest of the supporting cast was either asked to ham it up, or they thought it up on their own.<\/p>\n

The story was pretty ad-hoc and relied heavily upon unrealistic emotions. The direction was terrible. Editing was shoddy, and scenes looked like they\u2019d been cut and pasted to fit, instead of to flow. The dialogues were cheesy and theatrical. But all that is small change when the basic premise of the story is faulty. That\u2019s the foundation, and with a shaky foundation, you ain\u2019t going nowhere. The songs were OK, I think. The \u201cDon\u2019t mess with me\u201d number was pretty catchy.<\/p>\n

With this film, Mr. Agnihotri gets himself in the top 3 of my \u201cDirectors to not watch out for\u201d list. What that means for you\u2019ll, is to not watch his films. What that means for me is to watch and rip to shreds. I hope I\u2019ve done that adequately here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rating : Poor (0.5\/5)Genre : Action \/ Sports \/ DramaYear : 2007Running time : 2 hours 45 minutesDirector : Vivek AgnihotriCast : John Abraham, Arshad Warsi, Boman Irani, Raj Zutshi, Bipasha Basu, DHAN DHANA DHAN GOAL (DDDG) : NO GOALS … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"twitter_17000648_17000648":"","facebook_10233691416821117_190635594420624":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[51,76],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-51","category-bollywood"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"post-thumbnail":false,"sow-carousel-default":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"amodini","author_link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/author\/admin"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Rating : Poor (0.5\/5)Genre : Action \/ Sports \/ DramaYear : 2007Running time : 2 hours 45 minutesDirector : Vivek AgnihotriCast : John Abraham, Arshad Warsi, Boman Irani, Raj Zutshi, Bipasha Basu, DHAN DHANA DHAN GOAL (DDDG) : NO GOALS … Continue reading →","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p45CAb-bq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1893,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions\/1893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}