It is well known that a film with a sporting backdrop already has half its battle won, since it deals with the triumph of the human spirit; of underdogs who make it and of course redemption from a past failure. Iqbal (2005) and Chak De! India (2007) of course got the other half right as well, making them extremely engaging films while Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal succeeds but partially. The film focuses on its populist plot-points to be somewhat watchable and even involving but in the final analysis, it is a not-so-good film with several problems with its inept screenplay.

The film takes its time to settle down. In fact the first hour seems shockingly amateurish with particularly cringing dialogue. But come close to the interval – the sequence at Old Trafford, the film does take off, making the football matches engrossing to a certain extent even if not to the extent of us rooting for the girls in Chak De! India.

The film does raise questions of identity, nationalism and some pertinent questions like Sunny asking his father if he is such an Indian at heart, then why did he come to UK and bring him up in UK as a British National thus making him thoroughly confused about his identity but instead of exploring the issues, the film takes the convenient, clap-inducing pseudo patriotic stance going rah rah India. It seems looking at Namaste London and now Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal, our new enemy seems to be the Angrez Gora. So we go to their country, make use of their facilities and subsidies and then make films with them as racist villains and taunt them with how we drove them out of our country! So of course we have two cardboard villainous caricatures in the white player Patrick who keeps calling Sunny a Paki and the land grabber Anne Fisher who wants to see the club shut down at all costs. And when Sunny joins another football club with the lure of better money and other perks (and it is common among footballers to change clubs) he is painted as a bastard who has sold out and is disloyal to his ‘Indian’ mates and so in the climax he has to return, repent and go Main Hindustaniyat Nahin Bhula. Incidentally one is also not totally convinced by Sunny being left out of the Aston Team because he is Asian considering you have enough British Asian sportsmen like Monty Panesar and Vikram Solanki in cricket and Aamir Khan in boxing representing England today and we are just looking at just a county football team. This seems to be a more convenient plot-point to get him into the Southall team and for the film to proceed. And that’s the other problem with the screenplay. The plot-points are too simplistic and pat on and make for one dimensional and uninteresting storytelling without any conflict like Tony agreeing to coach the team after just one dialogue sequence with Shaan– Too easy, too unconvincing as is Sunny’s change of heart on meeting a friend of his father.

Logical loopholes abound in the script. For instance, surely the football team with its love for their club would know about what happened in 1985, the one time the club reached the finals but no, we have to get it out of Tony Singh so that the audience is told the story. This and Tony’s past could have been tackled in a different manner for the information to still come in a more logical and convincing manner.

There are but few memorable sequences that stay with you once the film is over – The sequence when Tony Singh opens the eyes of the team at Old Trafford for one and a small interesting sequence when the team pretends to be various TV channels to save a fellow member from his suspicious (though rightly so) girlfriend.

Apart from the script, a major problem also lies in the casting and on two levels. One - it is difficult to accept actors who are 35 + and look it as being part of a winning English county football team and secondly, most of the players according to the script have been born and brought up in UK but the film casts Indian actors rather than actual British Asians. This takes away a lot from the film as our actors are unable to get the accents, attitude and body language the roles require. These are regular Bollywood Indians acting in a Hindi film based in London and not British Asians whom they are supposed to be.

While on the actors, Boman Irani is the life of the film as Tony Singh. It is his performance that holds the film together. The actor comes up with yet another superlative performance showing why he is one of the finest actors in the country. See him in the scene where he takes the players to the Manchester United Mecca, Old Trafford or his speech before the final or just his expression as he sees Sunny’s father amongst the crowd. Arshad Warsi is efficient enough but has done better though John Abraham still has a long way to go as an actor, adequate enough in the more simpler scenes but finding the complexities beyond him like in the scene with him and Arshad in the hotel room. It is Raj Zutshi who makes an extremely solid impact as Monty Singh, the emotional sardar in the film while Shernaz Patel, a fine actress, is sadly wasted. Here is a fine actress who deserves better. The less said about Bipasha Basu the better.  Admittedly it is an extremely weakly sketched out role but Bipasha on her part is just not good enough an actor to rise above the written word and is thus thoroughly defeated by the script making this one of her weakest performances ever.

Technically, special mention must be made of Attar Singh Saini’s smart cinematography although the football scenes are captured so-so and should have been far more exciting. Musically the title track is well tuned though the ‘item number’ O Billo Rani doesn’t gel with the film at all.

All in all, strictly average fare at best.