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"Director: Sajid Khan, Screenwriters: Sajid Khan, Robin Bhatt, Akarsh Khurana; Starring: Saif Ali Khan, Riteish Deshmukh, Ram Kapoor, Bipasha Basu, Tamannaah Bhatia, Esha Gupta, Satish Shah, Chunky Pandey; Running time: 159 mins; Certificate: 12A  When an actor disassociates themselves from a film before it&amp;#039;s even released, you know it&amp;#039;s a bad sign. Alarm bells should have started ringing when you heard Humshakals was to be helmed by Sajid Khan. Despite every effort to give him a fair trial, there is no escaping the fact that Khan has plummeted to previously uncharted depths of lunacy, beyond even his own Himmatwala standards. Crass, offensive, vulgar, inane: there aren&amp;#039;t enough adjectives to effectively convey the endless agony that is Humshakals. Ashok Singhania (Saif Ali Khan) is a billionaire heir of an industrial empire, who dreams of becoming a stand-up comic. He and his sidekick Kumar (Riteish Deshmukh) find themselves in a mental asylum, after Ashok&amp;#039;s money-grabbing Uncle Kans (Ram Kapoor) gives them a dose of a mind altering drug that makes them behave like dogs. Confusion ensues when Ashok and Kumar inadvertently switch places with their doppelgangers. They use their Uncle&amp;#039;s double, a murderer with a serious OCD, to avenge him, but more chaos follows for the hapless pair when a third set of lookalikes surface.   All credit to this ensemble of brave, but foolhardy actors, who were prepared to give the cocksure Sajid Khan a second chance. No one in their right mind will again, after this trauma-inducing, travesty of a film. While it&amp;#039;s familiar territory to Deshmukh, Saif is evidently roped in to lend his star power to the proceedings. He has frequently demonstrated his flair for intelligent comedy, but his quest to find acceptance by a mass audience is just not worth subjecting himself to this level of public humiliation. Saif gamely gives his all, even dressing in drag, but it all adds up to an uncharacteristically hammy performance and he&amp;#039;s fighting a losing battle from the off, in the face of such puerile material. We are left to grimace though scenes that include Deshmukh urinating on Satish Kaushik&amp;#039;s head and humping Ram Kapoor&amp;#039;s leg like a dog; dwarves thrusting their faces in Saif&amp;#039;s crotch; Kapoor&amp;#039;s alter-ego expressing his desire to rape his dragged up double; a Hitler-worshipping Nazi warden who threatens to gas the patients of a mental institute and a climax that inexplicably includes a recreation of the House of Commons and a Hindi speaking Prince Charles. The triple roles for the core cast equate to three times the trauma. It is inconceivable how anyone could have heard the premise of this film and thought they had a hit on their hands.   Crass, offensive, vulgar, inane: there aren&amp;#039;t enough adjectives to effectively convey the endless agony that is Humshakals.  The women pout and preen on cue and fortunately for them, they are spared any major trauma. Sadly, we the audience, are not. The dialogue barely elicits any laughter and that which is heard is evidently borne of hysteria. Helicopters, fast cars and mansions are thrown in as we embark on a sight-seeing trip around London and Mauritius. It&amp;#039;s unnecessary excess in a film that knows no boundaries. Borne of the imagination of Sajid Khan, you&amp;#039;ve got to wonder what he was on when he penned this and how he hoped to find an audience for such offensive material that succeeds in insulting almost every demographic, as well as our intelligence.  The cast would be wise to follow Bipasha&amp;#039;s lead and erase all traces of Humshakals from their minds and their IMDb lists; deny all involvement and attribute it instead to their real-life doppelgangers. While his last film died a death, Sajid Khan will have to plead diminished responsibility for this one. His claim that he has finally made a hit film is easily the biggest joke of all. But the joke&amp;#039;s on him. Nobody else is laughing.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/bollywood/review/a579420/humshakals-review-three-times-the-trauma-in-a-travesty-of-a-film/>