Hum Hai Raahi CAR Ke (2013; special appearance) - Review in English

About the story: Priyanka, called Pri (Adah Sharma) and Shammi (Dev Goel) are next-door neighbours and friends. In the night of New Year’s Eve, they’re driving by car from Mumbai to Pune. On their way they meet with several ludicrous experiences, and when they’re stopped by a police patrol, they have a lot of explaining to do to Inspector Karan Karate (Sanjay Dutt)...


Those who want to see this movie have to watch it on YouTube - it wasn’t released on DVD. Better this way. No one needs this DVD. And no one needs this film.

In the Hindi film industry it’s common practice that directors and/or producers treat their kids, in case they’re aspiring to be actors, to a debut movie. Ideally they also bring some stars around to make an appearance or at least a cameo in it - for thus the media will pay attention to the project which they otherwise probably wouldn’t.

Director Jyotin Goel was able to persuade a lot of old companions to support his son Dev’s launch vehicle. In the cast you find names like Juhi Chawla, Rati Agnihotri, Anupam Kher, Chunky Pandey, Vivek Vaswani - and Sanjay Dutt who once played the loveable Captain Kishen in the movie Safari, directed by Goel, who in the mid-90’s patiently waited for Sanjay to be released from investigative custody and finishing the long pending Safari shooting. Sanjay always gave Goel high credit for this, and he returned the favour with his special appearance in HHRCK as police inspector Karan Karate - a role which demanded not very much from him. A cop with shades - cool, smooth, dry, funny - thanks, we’ve seen this. (Not to say, too often.)

But well, okay, it was a favour for an old friend (who expressed his gratefulness for his “true friendship and amazing generosity” in the credits), and in any way, Sanjay fared far better than his colleagues who (at least some of them) were to play buffoons the way they were common in the early 90’s. Maybe Goel simply got stuck there; after all, he even recycled the “pagal gorilla” from Safari… though Sanjay as Captain Kishen at least was to fight and defeat the “beast” while Dev gets chicken-hearted when he meets a gorilla who eats a banana and pees. The whole scene is as stupid as the entire movie. So let’s just forget it.

Pity for Adah Sharma who is sweet and has some talent; you wish her a better script and a better director to make a re-start. For Dev Goel, his launch vehicle turned out to be a non-starter; the boy he plays was surely meant to be likeable but actually he’s a milk face, a wimp, a peeper, an ass, and the desperate attempt to make him a hero in the end doesn’t save him. Apart from that, Dev Goel obviously watched too many movies with Ranbir Kapoor - his acting appears like a fruitless attempt to imitate Ranbir. You’re tempted to shout at him, Wake up Dev! - with stupid films like HHRCK and without your own personality there will be no career for you.

If you want to see Sanjay’s scenes, you see him for two, three minutes after a good half an hour and then once again after a good one and an half hours - there he gets about ten minutes screentime. But as I said, you don’t really need to.


Produced and directed by Jyotin Goel
122 Min.; YouTube, no subtitles
© Diwali