Dharam Sankat Mein: Old wine served in new bottle

Starring: Paresh Rawal, Naseeruddin Shah, Annu Kapoor Director: Fuwad Khan Rating: ** (Two stars) Dharam Sankat is essentially old wine served in new bottle. Unfortunately, it tastes just the same this time around. When filmmakers choose to make films on a subject that revolves around religion, their practices and God being one and the same, monotony creeps into film making for their is only so much that one can say about the topic that has been touched about frequently in Indian cinema. Oh My God worked as a refreshing change and so did PK to some extent. But anymore attempts by future filmmakers to extract more juice from the same issue will result in giving zilch gain. Dharam Sankat Mein suffers from the same malady. Dharampal Trivedi (Paresh Rawal) is a cool Gujarati not-so-religiously inclined Brahmin caterer in Ahmadabad. His happy life turns topsy turvy when he discovers his legal adoption paper in his late mother's bank locker. On realising that he was born to a Muslim father and adopted at birth by a Hindu Brahmin family, a disgruntled Paresh sets out on a trip to find his real biological father. Aiding him in this trip is his Muslim neighbour Annu Kapoor, a lawyer with tongue twister of a long name. Annu finally hunts down the location of Paresh's biological father to an old age Muslim home that is manned by a religiously upright Imam (Murali Sharma, brilliant) who refuses Paresh to meet his real father until he has mastered the ways of Islam. Paresh then with the help of Annu gets down to imbibing the tenets of Islam. Simultaneously, there is trouble brewing at Paresh's household because his elder son is in love with a girl whose family is a staunch follower of spiritual guru, Neelanand Baba (Naseeruddin Shah). To win the girl's hand for his son, Paresh has to become a devout Hindu and also profess his special affinity towards the leching Baba. Will Paresh succeed in donning the garbs of both Muslim and Hindu adeptly at the same time? Will he be finally reunited with his real father? Will he finally serve Neelanand Baba to help his son get married to the girl he loves? It's a Dharam Sankat that Paresh has to solve. Dharam Sankat Mein tries to stitch a done-to-death plot by peppering it with certain funny sequences involving Hindu and Muslim religious practices. Paresh's comic timing sadly fails to revive this one and neither does his serious act as the man torn between different religious identities cut any ice. Annu Kapoor as the verbose Urdu loving lawyer delights with his clear speech and boisterous antics. However, the scene stealer for us was the very versatile Naseeruddin Shah whose entry on a bike a la Guru Ram Rahim added the extra zing into this otherwise slow-paced film. Be it his lusty gaze, the hysterical shaking of his head or his rockstar styled spiritual avatar, Naseeruddin once again proves his shape-shifting abilities onscreen while playing myriad characters. Director Fuwad Khan makes a genuine attempt at satirizing the society's existing human hypocrisy towards religion other than theirs. Unfortunately, Dharam Sankat Mein ends up becoming a preachy drag towards the end. On the whole, this is a one-time watch and you definitely wouldn't rue even if you give it a miss.