Funny bone feasts as grey cells starve

Main Tera Hero
Hindi (U/A)
Director: David Dhawan
Cast: Varun Dhawan, Ileana D'Cruz, Nargis Fakhri, Anupam Kher, Saurabh Shukla, Arunoday Singh, Rajpal Yadav

There was a point of time in Indian cinematic history when the David Dhawan-Govinda pairing was like a golden-egg-laying goose.

Of course there was no hallmarking the gold, but they invariably got the cash registers jingling, even if the content of the films was headache-inducing drivel. However, many people were spared the headache thanks to Dhawan's heavy dose of campy/cheesy comedy.

Dhawan seems to have reserved the best of his brand of comedy for his son's first solo vehicle “Main Tera Hero”. Much of it instantly makes you feel that it was originally intended for, and would have been better executed by, Govinda. Young Varun tries to make the rest his own, but he still has a long way to go.

And he should take a lesson from Arunoday Singh's filmography: Mere brawns never maketh a good protagonist.
So we begin the film with Bangalore-based college student Sunaina (Ileana D'Cruz in a role that insults her acting capabilities), who is stalked by corrupt police officer Angad Negi (the alternately menacing anf caricaturish Arunoday Singh), but falls for Srinath Prasad, aka Seenu (Varun Dhawan in a dad-backed role), and breaks out of her mould, after another kind of stalking from our “hero”.

However, Seenu's heroics wins the heart of Ayesha (Nargis Fakhri, beautiful but wooden), daughter of a famous underworld don (Anupam Kher, donning an extremely un-don-ly avatar). She gets Sunaina abducted and brought to Bangkok, hoping Seenu would follow, and she would marry him.

Between these characters and others, like the don's stuck-in-the-1940s henchman (Saurabh Shukla) or Angad's pint-sized yes-man (Rajpal Yadav with his usual over-the-top antics), understanding turns to misunderstanding, serious circumstances  instantaneously descend into comedy, insipid dialogues and gags somehow manage to elicit laughter due to their constant repetition, and “Main Tera Hero” manages to blows or molest your mind, depending on how you choose to see it.

The pace is brisk, the songs are peppy (albeit being forgettable and at least two too many) and the entire plot is (somewhat) family-friendly. But one is able to focus on them only after looking past cringe-worthy visuals, unnecessary plot points (like Shakti Kapoor as Johnny, passing off names of old David Dhawan hits in place of dialogues), and below-par acting from histrionic powerhouses.

Give your grey cells a rest when you watch this laugh riot, whose brevity—at least when compared to other David Dhawan films—makes it just about endurable.