GHANCHAKKAR : REVIEW : RATING * * ½ Star

Banner : UTV Motion Pictures

Producer : Ronnie Screwvala & Siddharth Roy Kapur 
Sanjay Athray aka Sanju (Emraan Hashmi), a lazy husband and a smalltime thief must foot his modern fashion crazy wife Neetu's (Vidya Balan) bills. He decides to team up with Pandit (Rajesh Sharma) and Idris (Namit Das) for a bank robbery. Trio robs 35 crore from a bank and decide that they will meet three month later and distribute the money. Sanju is entrusted with the responsibility of hiding the money but when Pandit and Idris return to collect their share, Sanju refuses to recognize them.

The story of the film is very ordinary and its treatment is also nothing extra-ordinary. Parvez Shaikh and Raj Kumar Gupta’s screenplay is found to be lacking. However, the lead characters are in top form. Emraan Hashmi, as a lazy husband who loves TV more, Vidya Balan is first rate as a Punjaban. Rajesh Sharma and Namit Das are brilliantly in support. Pravin Dabas is satisfactory in cameo.

Raj Kumar Gupta directs a quasi-realistic urban comedy-thriller highlighting absurdity and a few laugh, most notably hilarious being the sequence of bank robbery, where the actors imitate Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra and Utpal Dutt. The length 137.47 minutes is too long. The ending is rushed, abrupt. Amitabh Bhattacharya’s lyrics are good and music by Amit Trivedi is average. Lazy Lad and Allah Meherban are useful. Cinematography by Setu is passable. Aarti Bajaj is weak in editing. The production values are good. Technically, average. The publicity was good.

At the box office, the film opened with average response and audiences are appreciating good sense of comic timing and performances of Vidya Balan, Emraan Hashmi, Rajesh Sharma and Namit Das and there is a fair chance that the film will recoup the investments.