Movie Review: Money Hai To Honey Hai

The concept "The common man should have style too" is an interesting one to put forth. To strengthen the case, there is an ensemble of interesting characters in Money Hai To Honey Hai. A rich, spoiled brat with business acumen, a fashion designer who cares for the common man, an honest advertising creative head, a fashion model, a popular TV actress, and a loser who has an unbeatable positive attitude. All this is done in a light vein. Unfortunately, ultimately nothing comes of the synergy they could create as a team or for them as individual characters.

You're right, this is too serious an analysis for a movie in this genre and with this look and feel. But, every time I see a good idea blow up in execution, it hurts, and think about it - a comedy that squeezes out the sense of humor in you (believe me, I do have one!)

Of course, the common man here refers to a person with no means to wear labeled brands, and has no sense of fashion. However, if the basic idea were thought through properly, it could have been extrapolated to so many situations where the common man suffers an unnecessary inferiority complex. This complex could be treated with something as simple as a product created just for him and by just being honest with him. Alas, if wishes were horses...

If the elaboration of the story is amateurish, the other departments from screenplay, to dialogues, to their delivery, to the expressions on the actors' faces, to the ambiance created around the actors, to the background music are equally amateurish. It's really a shame that when half an hour is spent in establishing the 6 main characters and 2-3 side characters, in the end it all seems futile. For example, Aftab Shivdasani's character who's creative at coming out with advertising taglines, does nothing spectacular in the end! None of the actors are given anything out of their comfort zone and thus nothing seems more than below average. As we have it, Govinda fans could very well be disappointed too.

I guess we should be grateful to Ganesh Acharya for deciding on limiting usage of Om Puri as a voice over. Otherwise, we know what he can be made to do in slapsticks such as these. But, that doesn't relieve us from Prem Chopra's antics. One can't get everything one wishes for.

Yet, there can be no excuse for keeping him on screen for long spans of time with just one expression on his face. And this happened more than once, where nothing was happening on screen, even the camera wasn't moving! So yeah, some trimming was obviously called for.

There are digs on various characters and issues you would encounter in your day-to-day life - Label designers and their attitude. Family soap operas, the camerawork and sound effects they use and of course, their viewers. Industrialists, the rich and their problems which have seemingly simple solutions. Telemarketers and how they annoy us. Popularity can make the commonest person a TV show host.

I thought the non-jumpy movements given to the actors in the songs were nice, if only for being different. But, the placement of the not-so-good-sounding music is so abrupt that the 'nice' feeling comes too late in the song to register.

As Manoj Bajpai, the guy with the ultimate positive attitude, says when he loses 80 lakhs in a business deal, "I gained 1 crore worth of experience, I'm still in the green with 20 lakhs!", anyone who sees the movie can say, "they gained 1 crore worth of experience of not watching a movie that looks slapsticky and has a cheesy title!"