After heroes like Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Aamir Khan and Ajay Devgan turned producers, it is the turn of heroines to command the happenings on the sets. Though Ravina Tandon and Juhi Chawla have done it much before, Manisha Koirala follows the path now in her 'Paisa Vasool' , meaning the value for money. The film publicized as a comic thriller has Sushmita Sen and Manisha Koirala herself, both playing lead players and without any crowd-pulling hero. The director is new and expectations are high, but neither the film could match the market demand nor did it create any novelty for viewers to sit quietly in the theatres and take note of the happenings on the screen. A comic thriller is not a new genre to Hindi Cinema; it was experimented well back in the Pran and Ashok Kumar films like 'Victoria No. 203' (long back though) and David Dhawan films like 'Bade Miyan Chhote Miyan' in the recent past. Both these films are good examples as to how a comic thriller should proceed to sustain viewers' interest for the three-hour-long movie. 'Paisa Vasool' is no way near to these master flicks; instead it turns out to be a half-baked film with weak screenplay and the jarry direction. Debutant director Srinivas Bhashyam has stolen the basic idea for his film from Mel Smith's 'High Heels and Low Lifes' but couldn't give it the needed punch and the Indian feel. Not only he fails in the film, but also does so for the leading lady Manisha Koirala, who looks fat and ugly, and hums too much.
As there is no hero to carry on with the happenings of the story, Manisha Koirala with her close buddy Sushmita Sen plays the two heroes. They are single workingwomen with a shady past and try hard to make their future brighter in the tinsel town. Manisha Koirala plays Maria Rosario. She is a married lady who has run away from a small town out of the clutches of her drunkard husband. Her husband who is also a cop by profession doesn't like her. On the other hand, Maria wants to live her life with maza and masti. She lands in Mumbai and works in a bakery whose owner dies after transferring the documents of the bakery and his bungalow in Maria's name. Maria has an opponent in the form of the bakery owner's son who wants to throw Maria out of the bungalow and sell the property to a builder so that he could meet out the expenses of his lecherous life.
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Maria meets Baby (Sushmita Sen) outside a disco. Baby is a struggler in film industry and has come from Delhi to make it big one day. But thanks to her height she is thrown out of most of the films because she cannot match today's short heroes. She works in music videos to meet her daily expenses. After meeting Maria, Baby decides to live with her. They come to know about a robbery by chance and then plan to blackmail the robbers. Both of them call themselves underworld goons to do make a fortune, but the circumstances make them go back; as their plan progresses people around them start getting killed by robbers. After a great hide and seek, Baby and Maria decide to hit back and deliver a final punch.
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As mentioned earlier the basic idea of the film 'Paisa Vasool' isn't new, as it has been attempted before. The film could have been a better one, had the director and scriptwriters (Bhashyam shares credit for this with Anurag Kashyap) taken care of the pace of the film, an important aspect for comic thrillers. The screenplay is very loose and lacks the quality to generate any kind of curiosity among viewers. In fact, in most of the scenes people come to know of the result well in advance. If the pace of the film mars the impact then unfolding of the story is worse than that. Bhashyam wastes a good amount of time in the beginning in establishing the cause of the film and when he manages to set the story on track, he proceeds with the happenings at a very slow pace. Bhashyam is not only not a good storyteller but also an incompetent technician.
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He does not know how to jump from one plot point to another. He uses the same soundtrack and same long shot to move from one scene to another time and again. Though the film has a good cinematographer in Nirav Shah, much more was expected from Shirish Kunder at the editing table. At least, he would have chopped half of the film. But, then there would have been the problem about the short length of the film. Dialogues by Kashyap and Bhashyam do not have the required impact and if Kashyap thinks that by using filthy language he can create the ambience for the underworld people (he started this trend with 'Satya' though), then he is in for a risk to his career. Bhashyam also triples as a choreographer with Umesh Jadhav, but there too he fails to deliver.
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As leading ladies -- Manisha and Sushmita -- have tried to make things look funny, except one or two scenes they fail to tickle the audience. Manisha looks old with a swollen face and hanging beauties. She doesn't fit in for the comedy. On the other hand, Sushmita plays better and fulfills the requirements her role. Makrand Deshpande and Tinu Anand look better than Vivek Chaudhary as Keema is the best in a short role. Rakhi Sawant as a sexy doll irritates. Her skin show does not have any sensual impact on viewers. Music by new comers -- Bapi and Tutul -- is below average as are the lyrics by Sandeep Nath. On the whole, the film doesn't have a bright future at the box office and will earn heavy losses to its distributors instead of their expectations of Paisa Vasool (value for money) from the film.
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