If you have David Dhawan as the director and Sanjay Dutt and Govinda as the two lead men, you can be sure, the film is about con men. You saw the trio at work in Jodi No. 1 and again in Haseena Maan Jaayegi. But while the stories of two con men in the earlier two films were entertaining, it is the writers, Yunus Sejawal and Shahnawaz Ahmed, who have done a con job in the third venture of the threesome, Ek Aur Ek Gyarah!

For, you’ve got to literally hunt for the story and novelty in screenplay, both of which are almost conspicuous by their absence. One really wonders what prompted a public limited company like Mukta Arts to back an insipid project like Ek Aur Ek Gyarah. Agreed, it raises laughter occasionally but that’s not enough to make Subhash Ghai’s company laugh all the way to the bank.

Ek Aur Ek Gyarah is about two guys, Tara (Govinda) and Sitara (Sanjay Dutt) who make a living out of cheating people. Their foster-mother (Himani Shivpuri) also helps them in their endeavours. With the police on their trail, the safest place they can think of is the residence of a strict and principled officer (Jackie Shroff) of the - hold your breath! - Border Security Force. Thank God, George Bush won’t be watching the film, otherwise, he would leave Iraq and invade the low-on-security India of David Dhawan!!

Anyway, a major part of the film has the two crooks operating from the BSF officer’s home. Since they are eligible bachelors, there are two pretty girls for them, one of who is the sister of Mr. BSF. Their game is up when they are forced by an absconding criminal to help his criminal-brother escape from jail. But they plead with Mr. BSF to give them one chance. He does, and they get both, the wanted criminal as well as his brother, arrested in a climax that’s a straight lift from a Laurel & Hardy film.

To show a BSF officer so silly as to be harbouring two criminals in his house is the limit. The problem with Ek Aur Ek Gyarah is that it makes every character a comedian, even the policemen. So long as it is the bumbling police officer in the lower ranks (Mushtaq Khan), it’s alright, but the BSF officer too? Please!

There are some things you can’t mess around with. David Dhawan had made a similar mistake in his last dud, Chor Machaaye Shor, in which the police and the state too were projected as silly and stupid. But the director of so many hits - and now so many flops - doesn’t seem to have learnt his lesson.

The comic punches are funny at times but since most of them have been seen earlier, they aren’t hilarious nor do they evince a laugh-riot. Dialogue (Bholu Khan and Aman Jaffrey) are quite funny.

Making Tara and Sitara speak in Punjabi wasn’t the wisest thing to do if only because the language can’t be understood universally.

The climax could’ve passed off as entertaining had it been crisp and fast-paced, but as the camera shuttles between the inside of the tanker and its outside, you get so much time to think that it’s no longer funny. This is among the worst climaxes of David Dhawan.

Govinda shows once again what a fine performer he is. Excelling in his role, the guy rises above the uninspiring script to give his 100% to it. Even though he has put on too much weight and his receding hair-line doesn’t make him look too handsome, it’s sheer delight to watch Govinda perform in front of the camera in comedy which is his forte.

Sanjay Dutt is also very good and complements Govinda ably. But Sanjay isn’t looking too fresh. Amrita Arora and Nandini Singh have precious little to do except exposing their anatomy and singing and dancing. Both are alright.

Jackie Shroff does well but the bags under his eyes take away his good looks. Gulshan Grover and Ashish Vidyarthi are okay. Rajpal Yadav is excellent in a comic role but his dialogues get repetitive. Mushtaq Khan, Tiku Talsania, Himani Shivpuri, Mahesh Anand, Supriya Karnik, Shiva, Ajay Nagrath, Ajit Vachhani, Viju Khote, Javed Khan, Dinesh Hingoo and Amit Behl lend the desired support.

David Dhawan’s direction is good but how one wishes, he’d take more inspiring scripts to make. He is repeating himself so much that it is no longer funny. Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy have done a good job with the music.

The title song, ’Beimaan mohabbat’, ’Jogiya’ and ’Dushmana’ are all well-tuned numbers. Picturisations of the songs could’ve been far richer and better.

Action scenes (Abbas Ali Moghul) have been well composed. Nadeem Khan’s cinematography is not very efficient.

Production values are average.On the whole, Ek Aur Ek Gyarah is old wine in new bottle. Once the initial craze - whatever there is of it - dies down, the audience will be nau do gyarah from the cinemas. Below average.