Sankat City will amuse you but ....
The main reason I watched this movie was because of Pankaj Advani, the director of the movie, assisted the great Kundan Shah of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron fame. The movie has some influences of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, but somehow it falls short and you feel something was missing. On paper you can get a promising dark comedy when car thieves get mixed up with loan sharks, movie makers, godmen and a con artist; however the overall impact is average. The story itself is pretty good but in some streches it loses it's way.
The comedy revolves around ten crore rupees that car thief, Guru (Kay Kay Menon) who is fond of fishes (don't know why), finds in a trunk of a stolen car. This money was a loan from a gangster/loan shark Faujdaar (Anupam Kher), to a film maker Gogi (Manoj Pahwa), who is making a movie with fading star Sikandar Khan (Chunkey Pandey). The film maker wants to buy land using this money from a builder, Pachisia (Yashpal Sharma), and to make the circle complete, Pachisia owes the same amount of money to Faujdaar. To make things more interesting the con artist Mona (Rimi Sen) wants to steal the money from Pachisia. If this amalgamation of situations and characters makes you dizzy, you are not alone … however this intertwined plot makes the movie interesting and produces tons of comical situations. The bomb disposal squad sequence is one of those out of the world situations that will remind you of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron style of comedy and then there are many situational comedy sequences, with rib tickling dialogs that will remind you of Hera Pheri. The climax, I thought was not appropriate; the bad guy getting killed in the end does not seem to gel with the mood of the movie.
Kay Kay Menon comes out of his usual intense and serious characters and plays a comic role very well. Anupam Kher and other supporting cast have done a good job except Chunkey Pandey, who overacts. The surprise package is Rimi Sen, she has transformed herself in a witty con artist that makes you forget all her earlier roles.
Overall the movie will amuse you in many parts but as a whole will not fill your appetite for comedy. I think it loses its way in trying to follow different styles of comedy, however if you are bored over the weekend this can be nice rental.
