It's difficult to say where Total Dhamaal is set. With lions, snakes, rhinoceros and elephants showing up at regular intervals in the trailer, you'd think you are somewhere in Africa, but the characters, we learn, are heading to a place called Janakpur. You see shops with Indian signboards in the background. But then there is a shot of what looks like an Eiffel Tower replica.
One wouldn't care if the jokes were at least funny. The best this one can do – and the first part was good silly fun – is make Johnny Lever fly a plane made out of auto-rickshaw parts just so that he can say 'auto-pilot.'
The plot is the same as the original. A race between a bunch of characters on a gold rush – a bag of money left by some benevolent millionaire who lets out his secret two minutes before he dies.
The ensemble has got bigger. Madhuri Dixit and Anil Kapoor play a bickering Gujarati married couple. And Ajay Devgn is seen flying on a rope with his crotch in danger of being hit by rhino's horn. They join some of the former cast members (Arshad Warsi, Javed Jaaferi, Riteish Deshmukh), and new ones (Sanjay Mishra, Pitobash, Lever).
Directed by Indra Kumar, and produced by Fox Star Studios, Ajay Devgn Films, Ashok Thakeria, Indra Kumar, Sri Adhikari Brothers, Anand Pandit, Total Dhamaal will release on 22 February.
Watch the trailer here: