Look. It was inevitable it was going to happen. A studio that has an intellectual property that made money the first time pulls it out of the grave until wheels fall off. Dhamaal 4 got its trailer this week, which puts its release date at 10 July 2026. What about the response of the internet? Absolutely brutal.
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Even the top of the box office director Indra Kumar was not expecting to see high art. We get it. It’s a slapstick comedy series. In fact, But there’s a big difference between brainless fun and whatever this 3 minute and 37 second promo is. The day Ajay Devgn appeared on the ball flying on dolphins gets plenty of mockery on social media timelines.The day Ajay Devgn appeared on the ball flying on dolphins is fodder for plenty of mockery on social media timelines. Yes. Flying dolphins. It really sounds like a scene from an old PlayStation 2 game.
This was previously the Dhamaal in 2007 as it was feeling fresh. Four unemployed men following the trail of a dying man’s golden hoard under a large ‘W’ in Goa. It was enigmatic, manic. Almost 20 years later, the urgency to re-create that magic is hard to watch. The main cast has returned. All three – Arshad Warsi, Riteish Deshmukh and Jaaved Jaaferi – are reprising their roles. Sanjay Mishra is there to do his signature stammering act. However, chemistry seems very forced. You watch the trailer and you can almost see the actors running mental calculations on how much they will make for watching that movie.
Recycled Jokes and Ghostly Pirates
Next there is the actual plot. At least, what can be called a plot. The creators are dubbing it their greatest treasure hunt ever. Well of course they are. This time around, they added a pirate theme to the blender. Ravi Kishan appears in costume as a bargain Jack Sparrow on a quest for a treasure map.
Then, the writers added haunted houses and ghosts to the story in case they couldn’t get enough of the idea. They had three half-baked ideas for scripts, and just decided to shoot them all in one big block.
The obvious problem is the carelessness of the writing. The trailer kicks off with the infamous red button gag literally! You know the one. Everything that was “Do not push the red button”. It was only a moment fifteen years ago that was funny. Now, they’re returning to it, with Ajay Devgn and Sanjay Mishra getting electric shocks. The studio believes they’re cooking up some memories. However, the audience is not on board. If you scroll through the comments on YouTube videos, you’ll see people getting extremely angry about how “not original” the material is. It’s not a movie trailer, but rather a tired greatest hits compendium.
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But the fact that this film is cheap on visual effects and skim on writing isn’t even the worst reason people are turning their backs on it. The initial and loudest reaction focuses on a very awkward joke.
Actress Anjali Anand, who stars alongside Riteish Deshmukh in the film, has a fabulous introduction sequence. The writers, in fact, felt that it would be a great idea for Riteish’s character to look at her and utter a dialogue complaining that she was carrying such heavy bags.
It is 2026. A joke about fat shaming by a mainstream family entertainer is just embarrassing. That particular scene was instantly cut from the film and praised to the heavens by film critics and digital artists. It’s not a thing you can do when you’re going to be using body language to score easy laughs with the family. It immediately turns people off. The public has grown beyond the days of pitting the weight of another body as big comedy. So the writers of Dhamaal 4 didn’t receive that memo.
Visuals Straight Out of a Video Game.
Let’s discuss the visual implementation. The marketing material boasts a huge scale. They even opened up the trailer at Imagicaa theme park to move this grand scale adventure story.
What appears on the screen is a true visual nightmare. Apart from the dolphin ride incident, the trailer of the film shows the Devgn in a fight with a wild tiger, in what could well be a spoof of his 90s action hero persona. Other than, the green screen stuff is so apparent that it puts you outside the moment. We have generative creations of a crocodile, snake and a massive octopus that doesn’t look like it has been rendered.
Remember, it has backing from T-Series and Devgn Films. They are large-scale production companies that have plenty of money. The previous movie in the series, Total Dhamaal, has grossed the film more than 150 crores despite having poor reviews. Their financial resources were sufficient to employ good visual effects artists. They simply didn’t care. The idea is that as long as the audience is provided with chaotic images, they will take the whole thing in even if there is music going.
The Crowded July Box Office
It’s all the bad news this time, and it’s bubbling over in a way that is really incredible, months before the movie is scheduled for release. There have been a lot of problems with the release schedule. The producers intended to release it on July 17. Next, the Alia Bhatt and Sharvari starrer spy film Alpha was shifted to 3rd July. So, Indra Kumar and his crew moved Dhamaal 4 to July 10.
They are taking on an extremely busy month. They’re in direct rivalry with their other big releases and carryovers. If your trailer goes down and the instant public opinion is that the franchise has been officially over, you’ll need to move the release by a week, and you won’t be saving anything. The first ticket sales are heavily influenced by audience excitement. At the moment, the only buzz around Dhamaal 4 is the memes that people are making about how bad it looks.
The filmmakers (Bhushan Kumar, Ashok Thakeria) are in deep trouble. They have also signed a host of big stars like Sanjeeda Shaikh, Esha Gupta, Upendra Limaye and more. We know that the marketing budget is large. However, they failed to remember the one key rule of comedy. It’s a genuine comedy! But at this moment no one is laughing.
