4 Idiots review: too many jokes crowd the bungalow

A bungalow full of somebody else’s cash and a watchman who would rather cut a deal than call the police should be enough to run a dark comedy for two hours on its own. 4 Idiots keeps elbowing that setup aside to squeeze in another gag.

King (Pugazh) and his crew, Queen, Jack and Ace (Kumki Ashwin, Indiran Elangovan, Thidiyan Thiruselvam), pick pockets on Chennai’s buses and trains, which makes the lockdown a professional catastrophe: no crowds, no income. One last job, then. King has the tip, a leaked recording about black money sitting in a beach-road bungalow with a single watchman on the gate, and the four are over the wall and caught within minutes. The watchman (Ravi Mariya) proposes a partnership instead of a phone call to the police: rough him up, take the money, split it later. What they find while they’re in there is the film’s best idea. The house belongs to a doctor (Vincent Asokan) whose real trade is organs, the watchman is on his payroll, which puts his generous offer in a different light, and the same lockdown that emptied the streets has now bolted the doors behind them.

Ravi Mariya’s watchman, the one man in the house who would rather deal than dial.

Kidneys on the line and slapstick in the same room could work. The film won’t stop clowning long enough to let the threat register, so the turn into survival thriller jars, and the comedy it keeps returning to leans on the four shouting over one another, panicking and pulling faces, with a fresh gag arriving before the last one has had a chance to land. The bigger issue is that the four are written as a unit. The playing-card names promise four distinct people; take the names away and it’s hard to say what separates one from the next, so the actors are left to generate personality through sheer commotion.

Pugazh turns the television persona down. The writing rarely lets him take charge.

Pugazh, in his second lead role, turns his television persona down, and it suits him. He’s meant to lead the four, and the writing rarely lets him take charge. Ravi Mariya turns up in a new get-up every few scenes and does a lot of jittery gun-waving, some of it funny, a lot of it hard work. Vincent Asokan is the steadiest thing in the house, all polish and quiet threat, and the film keeps him away from the four for too long. Pragya Nayan gets the glamour number, the one the posters are built around, and then the role swerves. The change gives her more to do, but never makes her any clearer.

Pragya Nayan and Pugazh in the glamour number the posters are built around; the role has a swerve coming that the promos never hint at.

U.K. Senthilkumar keeps one house from looking like one house, finding angles and colour the script doesn’t. The climax suddenly wants to say something serious, and by then these people are still sketches.

Sajo Sundar Murugesan knows how to shut four people in a room. He just panics whenever none of them is cracking a joke.