“I’ll make so many holes in your body that you won’t even know from where to breathe and from where to fart!” Well, the showpiece dialogue of Dabangg should tell you something about the film, even without seeing it. That it is loud and lewd and crude and crass. But unless you see it, you won’t understand how hugely entertaining it is for those true Hindi film- lovers! It is a movie made for the masses and it is massively enjoyable!

Dabangg is a throwback to the good old days of 70s and 80s where the hero (a flawed angry young man!) spewed claps- earning ‘dialogues’ at regular intervals and single-handedly conquered twenty goons at ease. Back then you went to the theatre to see the hero’s heroics; everything else in the plot was just secondary. The more colorful the villain and the more colorful his villainous deeds, the more was the fun to see him bashed up by the hero. A go-down shed was often the best place for such a fight. For the emotional quotient, there had to be some ‘deep’ reason for hero’s simmering anger and for romantic needs, there had to be a heroine who had to be wooed in a macho manner-  (not in mushy, round-the-tree, sing-a-song style!).

So going by those standards, in Dabangg we see Chulbul Pande alias ‘Robin Hood’ Pande (Salman Khan) as a corrupt police inspector in UP. Chulbul can nonchalantly smash up any criminal and even fire a gun at his own constable if he stands to gain financially. But, of course, there is a reason behind all this. There has to be! Throughout his childhood, he has been shoddily treated by his step-father (Vinod Khanna) and step-brother (Arbaaz Khan) and now he is doing all this to get his revenge on the big, bad world. His only solace is his mother (Dimple Kapadia), till he sees a spirited young girl (Sonakshi Sinha) making a living selling clay-pots and falls in her love. To complicate matters, there is a well-toned muscleman villain (Sonu Sood) who has been rubbed the wrong way by Chulbul’s antics! This villain will stop at nothing – he will kill hero’s asthmatic mother by stealing her inhaler and he will blow up his rivals with bombs. (Isn’t that neat?)

Despite its dumbed down story-line and over-spiced treatment, if Dabangg succeeds big time, it is thanks to Salman Khan. It would have taken a real Dabangg (read fearless!) hero to pull off such an inane film and Salman coolly manages that trick. Since the glory days of Big B carrying such meaningless films on his shoulders through his sheer screen magnetism, we have never had a hero of that caliber but Salman has now done that twice in succession- first in Wanted and now in Dabangg. In fact, Dabangg is almost a modified northern version of Wanted. From his wacky sense of humor to his bone-crunching gut-splitting blood-letting stunts to his bare-body machismo, Salman has taken the ‘Angry Young Man’ to the new ‘New Age’ levels. He almost makes you believe that being loud, lewd, crude and crass is actually cool! He shines through the deft emotional touches he imparts to the scenes where Chulbul interacts with his father and also in the awkward romantic advances he makes!

In the supporting cast, the veterans Vinod Khanna and Dimple Kapadia do their bits competently if in a bit over-the-top manner. Sonakshi Sinha impresses in her debut role. Arbaaz Khan doesn’t really know whether to play his character as a plain dumb-ass or as a good-at-heart dimwit and as a result loses out. Sonu Sood (who was supposedly the first choice for playing Chulbul Pande!) makes his mark as a worthy villain. And last but not the least, Malaika Arora does a fine item-number (‘Munni badnaam huyi darling tere liye’) jig in an appropriately come-hither style!

If you consider yourself a serious movie-lover who looks at the films as an expression of art, then stay away from Dabangg! But if you have no qualms about letting your hair down and enjoying a downright clichéd commercial potboiler, then go for it!

At least for me, debutante director Abhinav Kashyap has got his faarmula right – if you want to win big-time at the box-office, then ‘Nothing succeeds like excess’! So toss your brain out of the window and enjoy an out and out Salman show!