Dhamaal 4 Review: Ajay Devgn’s Comedy Sequel Is a Painfully Unfunny Disaster

Dhamaal 4 Review Verdict: Dhamaal 4 is the kind of film that makes you want to call someone, your parents, your oldest friend, whoever matters most, just to tell them you love them, because life is short and you just wasted part of yours. The original Dhamaal was unexpectedly good. This is unexpectedly horrible in a way that genuinely takes effort to achieve. Nobody accidentally makes something this bad.

 I watched Dhamaal 4 in theatres. I am writing this review shortly after returning home. I may need time to recover.

Quick Verdict

 I want to be honest about my state of mind going in. I had avoided Dhamaal 2 and Dhamaal 3 with the discipline of someone who has learned from their mistakes. The original Dhamaal surprised me; it was a genuinely fun, unexpectedly watchable comedy that I did not expect to enjoy as much as I did. So when Dhamaal 4 was announced, I thought: maybe. Maybe they have found their way back to something.

I was wrong in a direction I was not prepared for. Dhamaal 4 is not just bad. It is bad in a way that requires you to rethink what you thought you understood about what bad could mean. It made me appreciate Welcome to the Jungle. I am writing that sentence in a published review, and I am standing by it.

Dhamaal 4 — Movie Info

What Is Dhamaal 4 About?

This is the question I sat with for two hours inside the cinema, and I still do not have a confident answer. There is a ship. There is a treasure map. There is Ravi Kishan on the ship, apparently serving the nation in some capacity. Ajay Devgn makes his entrance riding a jet ski across the deck of the ship, which would be a fun action-comedy moment if it led somewhere. It does not lead anywhere. Ajay Devgn arrives, the scene ends, and the film continues without a plot.

In the original Dhamaal, the comedy came from a clear premise: four guys, one location where treasure might be buried, and a series of escalating disasters. Everything had a logic to it. The gags had setups. The characters had specific relationships to each other that produced specific kinds of comedy. Dhamaal 4 has characters. They are in scenes. The scenes follow each other. That is the closest I can get to describing the story because that is the closest the film gets to having one.

Dhamaal 4 Cast

Opening Scene Review

The Opening Sequence Sets the Tone Immediately. The film opens with an AI-generated sequence featuring the recreated likeness of the late Satish Kaushik. His character from the Govinda film, the one who used to speak in that “Pintule-Pintule” babble, is brought back here alongside Jackie Shroff in a flashback framing device. I sat with this for a moment, not out of reflection.

Out of confusion. What was the creative need for this opening? What story function does it serve? Why are we in a flashback before anything has been established in the present? Then I realized: the filmmakers did not have an opening sequence. They needed something to start the movie with, and this is what they came up with. The film does not have a Welcome-style establishment scene, no Johnny Lever setting up a hypothetical world, no character introduction that earns its place.

They needed a prologue, and they built one from AI-generated footage of a deceased actor and Jackie Shroff in a room. That is the problem statement the film presented to itself, and this was its solution. The opening also removes the ‘H’ from Dhamaal in the title card as a joke. Sanjay Mishra’s character tells someone to add the ‘H’ back. That is a joke in this film. You can calibrate your expectations accordingly.

Ajay Devgn & Ravi Kishan Review

The Ship Scene Ravi Kishan is on a ship. Ajay Devgn is doing a Pirates of the Caribbean impression, or more precisely, he is doing a poor man’s impression of what someone might do if they were trying to do a Pirates of the Caribbean impression and had not been given a script, a character motivation, or a reason to be there. He burns the treasure map.

The joke is that the fire is in his heart. Someone responds that the fire is somewhere else anatomically. I counted the number of times I smiled during the first fifteen minutes. It was zero. The problem is not that this joke is offensive or poorly constructed. The problem is that it is from 2012, and the film does not know this. The canned laughter that follows it sounds like canned laughter from 2012. The editing that punctuates it is from 2012.

Even the “Oh no” sound bite used is the one from BB Ki Vines, which feels aggressive of a specific era. The entire film operates as if it were somehow occurring ten years ago, which would have made it a merely mediocre Dhamaal sequel rather than the experience it currently is.

Ajay Devgn’s Performance

The Single Expression Era. I want to be clear that I have genuine respect for what Ajay Devgn has contributed to Hindi cinema. Phool Aur Kaante, Gangaajal, Drishyam, these are real achievements. None of that energy is present in Dhamaal 4. He arrives, he is in scenes, he leaves scenes. He shoots his entire involvement in what appears to be one outfit. He has one expression across the entire film, which is the expression of someone who has agreed to be somewhere and is keeping their end of the agreement, and nothing more.

The dolphin scene requires specific mention. His character, while being dragged across the ocean surface, is somehow talking on his phone. He is not distressed. He is horizontal, at sea level, being pulled through water, and he is having a conversation with the calm energy of someone on a lunch break. Then he rises to stand on two dolphins, and what appears on screen is a PNG image of Ajay Devgn sliding horizontally across the water. Not a person. Not an effect. A stationary image is being moved across a frame.

I cannot explain how this passed quality control. I am not sure quality control was involved. The dolphins themselves are a separate CGI issue. The octopuses later in the film are a separate CGI issue. The electric shock VFX, because you cannot show electricity going through an actor without VFX, apparently, is a separate CGI issue. Every single one of these separate CGI issues shares one quality: it is not good CGI. There is a specific kind of VFX that money can buy and a specific kind that requires skill, and Dhamaal 4 has budgeted for the former and received neither.

Riteish Deshmukh Performance

An Actor I Will Now Think About Differently: Riteish Deshmukh is a genuinely funny person. He has been in films that made me laugh. That history makes what Dhamaal 4 does with him more painful than it would be otherwise. His character’s entire existence is built around three things: he wants a wealthy girl, his wife is overweight, and every joke about him involves his wife being overweight. That is the character. There is no extension beyond this.

The same joke, deployed from every angle the writers could approach it from, for the entire runtime. He also attempts a Maharashtrian-Bhojpuri accent throughout. I sat with this accent for two hours trying to understand what the creative intention was. It is not consistently either accent. It is not a comedic exaggeration of either. It is simply an accent that Riteish Deshmukh is doing in scenes, while dialogue happens.

The rainbow joke, where his character sees a rainbow and says “what an Indra Kumar,” prompting his wife to correct him that the rainbow is an “Indradhanush,” leading to a comment about both being colorful, is the film making a meta joke about its own director. The director wrote a joke about himself into the film as meta-commentary. I watched this moment in the cinema with a particular feeling that I could not immediately name. Later, I identified it as the feeling of watching someone believe they have done something clever.

Arshad Warsi and Javed Jaffrey

 The Original Characters Return. Both actors reprise their characters from the first Dhamaal. The exact same comedic dynamic. The same energy. The same relationship. The same gags, placed into 2026 without modification. I want to be careful here because I am not criticizing either actor; I think both have real comedic ability, and both have demonstrated it in better films.

What I am criticizing is the decision to bring them back and give them nothing new to do. They are here because the original Dhamaal had them. Their presence generates familiarity. Familiarity is not the same as comedy. The film appears to believe it is.

VFX Review

A Mystery Something puzzling happened with this film’s money. It is not a cheap production; the cast alone is expensive, and there is clearly a budget present. But the decision-making around where that budget went is genuinely difficult to reconstruct. The VFX is everywhere. Cheap, unconvincing, and omnipresent. Every time something needs to happen that could not be practically achieved on set, VFX arrives, and the VFX is consistently the visual equivalent of a 2009 YouTube tutorial.

The electric shock animations, the ocean sequences, the animal encounters, the INR symbol that floats on screen every time Riteish Deshmukh makes a money gesture, all of it has the quality of someone discovering compositing software for the first time. There is also substantial product placement throughout the film. Specific brands are named. Their products appear.

Characters interact with them. This is not unusual for Bollywood production funding, but the ratio in Dhamaal 4 is conspicuous; a significant portion of the viewing experience involves watching characters engage with named products in ways that feel less like scenes than like advertisements that forgot to end. Seven producers are credited on this film. I spent time during the slower sequences wondering what each of them thought they were getting.

Comedy Review

2012 Energy in 2026. The comedy in Dhamaal 4 is not comedy in the sense of something that generates laughter through setup, subversion, character, or timing. It is comedy in the sense of things marked as jokes by the canned laughter track that accompanies them. The track is aggressive. Every moment that is intended to be funny is followed by a sound effect. Chirping birds when someone is confused. A slide whistle when something goes wrong. The “Oh no” sound bite at intervals.

This technique communicates that jokes are happening. It does not make the jokes funnier. If anything, the confidence of the laughter track is inversely related to the quality of what it is responding to. Were there moments I smiled? Yes. Riteish Deshmukh’s physical comedy works occasionally despite the material. There are two or three moments in the entire runtime where the film accidentally achieves something resembling genuine fun. This is not enough to change the overall assessment, but I am mentioning it in the interest of accuracy.

Ending

The Dhamaal 5 Announcement: The film ends by announcing that Dhamaal 5 is coming. I sat in my seat for a moment after this appeared on screen.

Was Dhamaal 3 a Hit or Flop?

For context: Total Dhamaal (2019), the third film in the franchise, had a mixed commercial and critical performance. It made money primarily on the strength of franchise recognition and ensemble star power rather than on quality. Dhamaal 4 appears to be operating on the same theory. Whether that theory produces the same commercial result is a question the box office will answer.

Pros & Cons

✓ Pros

• Riteish Deshmukh generates two or three genuine laughs through physical comedy alone.
• The film runs long enough that you can use the interval to reconsider your decisions.
• The original Dhamaal is still available to watch instead of this.

✗ Cons

• No discernible plot, characters exist in scenes that follow each other without accumulating into a story.
• Announces Dhamaal 5.
• Ajay Devgn is visibly operating at minimum investment.
• Riteish Deshmukh’s entire character is one repeated fat joke.
• CGI that would have been unacceptable in 2009.
• The PNG Ajay Devgn dolphin scene is a specific kind of cinema crime.
• Canned laughter track marks every joke for you because the jokes cannot mark themselves.
• Comedy calibrated to 2012 deployed in 2026.
• AI recreation of a deceased actor in the opening.
• Seven producers, no script.

Dhamaal 4 Rating: How Bad Is It?

Specifically, worse than Welcome to the Jungle. That is the comparison that keeps coming to me. Welcome to the Jungle was also a poorly structured ensemble comedy with bad action and lazy writing. Dhamaal 4 makes me remember moments from that film with something resembling warmth, which is not a thing I expected to happen. The original Dhamaal was genuinely good. I will hold onto that memory carefully. This film cannot touch it.

Final Verdict

Dhamaal 4 is the kind of film that makes you protective of the original. It makes you want to go home and rewatch the 2007 Dhamaal the way you might revisit a childhood photograph after a particularly difficult day, just to confirm that the thing you remember fondly actually existed the way you remember it. It did exist that way. The original Dhamaal is still good. Dhamaal 4 has no power over it. What Dhamaal 4 does have power over is the next two hours of your life, and I would encourage you to spend them differently.

If you’re deciding which movie to watch next, explore our latest reviews of The Five-Star Weekend Review, Rao Bahadur Review, Mollywood Times Review, Moana Live-Action Review, Evil Dead Burn Review,  Pritam and Pedro Review, and Satluj Review. At NexaFeed, we publish spoiler-free movie reviews, OTT series reviews, ending explained articles, hidden details, and streaming guides covering Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Netflix, Prime Video, Apple TV+, HBO Max, and the biggest theatrical releases from around the world.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. Is Dhamaal 4 out?

Ans. Yes. Dhamaal 4 is in theatrical release.

Q. Who is in the Dhamaal 4 cast?

Ans. Dhamaal 4 stars Ajay Devgn, Riteish Deshmukh, Ravi Kishan, Arshad Warsi, and Javed Jaffrey. Arshad Warsi and Javed Jaffrey reprise their characters from the original Dhamaal. Satish Kaushik appears in an AI-generated opening sequence.

Q. Who is the director of Dhamaal 4?

Ans. Dhamaal 4 is directed by Indra Kumar, who has directed all the Dhamaal films.

Q. Is Dhamaal 4 worth watching?

Ans. No. Unless you are specifically curious about what a 2012-era comedy sensibility looks like when deployed in 2026 with bad CGI and no script, there is nothing in Dhamaal 4 that justifies the time. Watch the original Dhamaal instead.

Q. Was Dhamaal 3 (Total Dhamaal) a hit or flop?

Ans. Total Dhamaal (2019) had a mixed commercial run. It made money relative to its budget primarily due to franchise recognition, not critical reception.

Q. Is Anil Kapoor in Dhamaal 4?

Ans. Based on the available cast information for this release, Anil Kapoor does not appear to be part of the Dhamaal 4 ensemble.

Q. Will there be a Dhamaal 5?

Ans. Dhamaal 4 announces Dhamaal 5 in its closing sequence. Whether this announcement translates into an actual production is a question that will be answered by the box office.

Dhamaal 4 is in theatres. The original Dhamaal (2007) is available on streaming. Choose accordingly.