Story
The entire story takes place in Singapore. Nitin (Akshay Kumar) is a domestic help for rich industrialist (Archana Puran Singh). He has a beautiful and rich girlfriend Anjali (Katrina Kaif). Ram (Suneil Shetty) works as a driver to a courier company in Singapore. He has a rich girlfriend Manpreet (Sameera Reddy). Harbans (Paresh Rawal) is a conman who is on the verge of shutting his business down. Nitin and Ram conspire to kidnap the dog of the lady industrialist. Manpreet’s father sets the marriage of Manpreet with the son of Harbans. The rest of the story is all about what happens when all these characters end up in a hotel.

Actors:
Akshay Kumar is really good. But the director didn’t use him to fullest because he has to cater to 22 characters in this movie. Akshay goes missing for 30 minutes of runtime of the movie because he is locked up in a closet. Sunil Shetty is more like a character actor than a hero in this movie. Katrina Kaif and Sameera Reddy don’t have much to do in the movie. Neha Dhupia impresses as a call girl. Paresh Rawal is adequate. Johnny Lever is good as an assassin. Rajpal Yadav is good as a crooked waiter. Archana Puran Singh shouts more and acts less.

Technical departments:

Story: The butlet/dog kidnapping part of the movie is heavily inspired by the Hollywood film ‘Screwed’ (2000). The hotel episode of the movie is inspired by the Hollywood flick ‘Blame It on the Bellboy (1992)’. This film is already copied in Hindi as ‘one two three’ in the last year. The flood scene in climax seems to have got inspired by ‘towering inferno’ (1974).

Screenplay – direction: Priyadarshan has the knack of weaving multiple threads into superb situational comedy. But, in this movie he couldn’t able to effectively generate the comedy. The slapstick comedy in this movie is little stale as we have been seeing the similar work for Priyadarshan for the past one decade. Priyadardhan has mastered the technique of ending all his films with chases. The backdrop of flood in the hotel doesn’t appeal and it waters down the interest in the movie. Direction is adequate. Screenplay should have been better.

Other technical departments: Music is just average except for Paisa song. Cinematography is good. Art direction is nice.

Analysis: Priyadarshan has invented this kind of slapstick comedy genre with Hera Pheri around 10 years back and he has been following the same pattern for years. De Dana Dan also has a similar pattern and draws heavy inspirations from ‘Screwed’ (2000) and ‘Blame It on the Bellboy’ (1992). Though there are a few entertaining moments, this movie lacks the comedy timing we generally see in Priyadarshan’s movies. De Dana Dan works in parts, but disappoints on a whole.

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