The Film: Excuse Me
RATING: 2/10
N. Chandra Global Infotainment Limited's Xcuse Me! is a youthful entertainer. The film is designed as a sequel to 2001's Style which portrayed the humorous escapades of the lovable, happy-go-lucky duo, Bantu (Sharman Joshi) and Chantu (Sahil Khan). The story of Xcuse Me! takes off after the two pass out from college and start looking for jobs. However, when they fail to land jobs despite repeated tries, they enrol themselves for a hotel management course and take up apprenticeship in a 5-star resort in Goa. In a series of episodes thereafter, the two pals set a number of people and things right at the hotel in their own humorous manner. In the process, Chantu falls in love with Priya (newfind Sunali Joshi) who is the daughter of one of the two owners of the hotel while Bantu falls in love with the other owner's daughter (Jaya Seal).
The girls' fathers are averse at first but later agree to their liaisons on one condition - that Bantu and Chantu prove their worthiness by successfully reopening one of their hotel resorts which had been completely damaged by a local don running a competitive hotel. How Bantu and Chantu manage to get the resort started and thereby, win the approval of the fathers for marriage forms the rest of the fun-filled story.
A light entertainer, the film has a story that progresses at a fairly breezy pace. Despite being somewhat cocky, the central characters of Bantu and Chantu succeed in endearing themselves to the viewers primarily because they come across as enterprising and lovable young lads who almost always end up on the side of the good. Several of the comic episodes in the story have punch and make the viewers laugh.
Dialogue (Imtiaz Patel) are extremely well-written and the use of tapori language by Bantu will go down well with the youngsters inMaharashtra. The first half is breezy and fairly entertaining. Although the post-interval portions are not as good, the goings-on still manage to keep alive the viewers' interest till the end. Climax is comical but should have been more fast-paced.
Sharman Joshi is excellent. The boy may not be handsome but he is a brilliant actor. Sahil Khan also acts well. The two share a very good chemistry on screen. The girls don't have much to do and both, Jaya Seal and Sunali Joshi, are average. Their pronunciations are very faulty. Saurabh Shukla raises laughter at several places. Mushtaq Khan is quite nice. Snehal Dabhi is very funny as the don's brother. He does a splendid job. Sudhir Dalvi, Hemant Pande, Shashi Sharma, Muni Jha, Darshan Jariwala, Dolly Bindra and others lend the required support.
N. Chandra's direction is more or less consistent with the story's demands. Although he succeeds in lending the film a youthful flavour, he could have tried to make it funnier as the subject offered more scope for humour than that exploited by him. Sanjeev Darshan's music is fairly good. Among the songs, 'Yeh tu kya kar rahela hai' has more appeal. However, this song, which is the best, would be liked in Maharashtra mainly, thanks to the tapori lyrics. In fact, the song would be rejected in most of the other circuits because of the slang. 'Ishq hua' is also enjoyable. Cinematography and other technical aspects are alright. Production values are appropriate.
On the whole, Xcuse Me! has appeal for the youngsters and would do fairly well in Maharashtra and some major cities. Its similarity to Style would restrict its business. Further, its start has been so poor in most circuits that it may not even get a chance to consolidate its position in the face of competition from starcast films already released and those to be released in the coming weeks.
