Madgaon Express: Kunal Kemmu’s Directorial Debut Is Among The Funniest, Most Original Comedies Of Recent Times

IN Kunal Kemmu’s Madgaon Express, his supremely funny directorial debut, three male friends want to validate their friendship by doing that one thing Hindi films have taught them: travel to Goa. The aspiration starts from 1998, back when they were in school. Parental supervision hindered it. They try again post-college but a drunk accident jeopardises their impromptu plan till the ball finally starts moving in 2015 when they make the trip by train.

Madgaon Express is backed by Farhan Akhtar’s Excel Entertainment, the same production house that has popularised the genre (Dil Chahta Hai, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara) and restricted it to rich people. In the projects greenlit by the studio, travelling is a means to an end as affluent friends lose and find themselves. The characters look a certain way, the wind sweeps their hair in an aesthetic direction and everything becomes a concern except money. Succinctly put, these are also the films which the protagonists in Madgaon Express fed on. All but one.

In Kemmu’s superb film, three friends grow up together and then life happens. They lose touch, and then virtually hold things together. Pratik Garodia (Pratik Gandhi), a sheltered Gujrati boy moves to the United States. The self-made Ayush Gupta (Avinash Tiwary) lives in South Africa. Only Dhanush aka Dodo (Divyenndu) continues living in Mumbai. His life is unchanged. Dodo lives with his father in a 2 BHK flat, moves in and out of jobs and spends his time sitting before the computer.

Social media shows him how well his two friends are doing and that his own life has panned out nothing like he had planned. He thus does the next best thing: photoshop. While talking to his overachiever friends, Dodo photoshops a life that does not exist. In that he lives in a penthouse, accidentally runs into Farhan Akhar, parties at Salman Khan’s farm house and Anurag Kashyap gives him pep talks (in a hilarious scene, the real Kashyap comments on his fake picture with: “Tu hain kaun be” – who the hell are you?)

But when Pratik and Ayush plan to visit Mumbai, it puts Dodo’s well-crafted sham into disarray. He goes back to the start and plans a trip to where they always wanted to go: Goa.

Madgaon Express runs the whole Dil Chahta Hai (2001), Go Goa Gone (2013) and Lootcase (2020) hog from here — three friends have a life-altering trip to Goa, drugs and local gangs get involved and a suitcase plays a pivotal role in the confusion — but culminates as one of the funniest, most original comedies in recent times. Kemmu, who has written the story, dialogues and is also credited as one of the lyricists, displays serious chops in the way he uses the setting, stages the scenes and commits to the worldbuilding which does not break character even during songs (my favourite is this ear-worm titled “Not Funny”).

The tone is somewhere between slapstick and situational and ensures the film is consistently riotous, something even my favoutite comedy of all time — Welcome — struggles with in the third act. Gags come from all directions. Dodo asking his disappointed friends if they are having fun (“enjoying no?”), the allergy-prone Pratik falling into a bed full of cocaine and getting overdosed (the scene-stealing Gandhi is smashing as he flits from being scared to daring, one high at a time), Dodo convincing his NRI friends to take the local train and extolling the advancements of India while the BGM of Akhtar’s Lakshya scores the moment, a supposedly dreaded gangster and his gang falling asleep in the afternoon after kidnapping people — because it is Goa and siestas are non-negotiable.

Kemmu hat tips everyone from David Dhawan (men cross-dress as women), Anees Bazmee (mayhem is the order of the day) and Rohit Shetty (Goa being the playground to the mayhem) but tempers these influences with his own sensibilities. There is a cute subplot of two local gangsters being ex-lovers (Upendra Limaye and Chhaya Kadam are excellent), an accident ‘prone’ area being misspelt as ‘porn’, an all female-led gang called “kombdi” after a dead chicken. But what Kemmu brings most to this set-up is his own worldview.

Madgaon Express is a more humbling road movie compared to its flashy Excel counterparts (every time the abroad-returned Pratik and Ayush turn up their noses at the smallness of the yellow taxi or a congested local train, they feel like stand-ins of DCH and ZNMD) and Kemu never loses sight of the story he wants to tell. There is a lot that is inventive here, even in the way the filmmaker gleefully punctures the Goa dream Hindi films have solidified as a reality with repetition. During one of their failed attempts to make the journey, the first step was to play Dil Chahta Hai’s CD till one of them threw up and the car hit a lamppost. When they want to go jet skiing and the skier says he cannot leave them unsupervised, Dodo fights with him, reasoning that it is not how they show it in films. In his debut film, Kemmu takes an oft-repeated narrative and reclaims it with his own voice.

The performances help immensely. The casting is perfect and the leads have infectious chemistry. Divyenndu, a streaming star, has impeccable timing and can make moments out of thin air. Gandhi is terrific as he does his own harmless Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde polarity. And between them stands Tiwary, a remarkable actor who holds his own while offsetting their excess energy.

But to treat Madgaon Express as a senseless comedy (as impressive as it is) or a counter-narrative to other films of its genre (as effective as it is) will be doing it a disservice. Kemmu does both but he has also put together a moving story of friendship and the way non-tangible things, like class and time, affect (if not change) it.

Dodo, the middle-class Mumbai resident, is the narrator of this story for a reason. He outlines an overlooked existence of a friend who stayed behind, someone who could not walk abreast with others and is now fated to remain while the rest can leave. There is a telling scene in the film when Dodo goes to the airport to pick up Pratik and the latter immediately uses a sanitiser after shaking hands. It is supposed to be funny and to Kemmu's credit it is. But, it also makes one pause. This emotional heft, perceptible but not overwhelming, puts Madgaon Express right up there with any other celebrated buddy comedy. Except, it does something rare with the premise: it imbues a collective spirit where individuals look out, and not so much within. Madgaon Express, at its giant heart, is about friends catching up with each other after long.