Star Cast: Ajay Devgn, Arshad Warsi, Riteish Deshmukh, Jaaved Jaaferi, Sanjeeda Shaikh, Anjali Anand, Ravi Kishan, Sanjay Mishra, Upendra Limaye, Esha Gupta
Director: Indra Kumar
The Cine Buzz Star Ratings: (3.5/5) 
Eighteen years since a bunch of squabbling opportunists first went chasing after Boman Irani's dying wish, the Dhamaal franchise is still doing exactly what it has always done - throwing a pack of greedy, loud, entirely illogical characters at a pile of hidden gold and letting chaos do the rest. Dhamaal 4 doesn't reinvent that formula. It barely tweaks it. And depending on how much patience you still have for this particular brand of madness, that's either the film's biggest comfort or its biggest problem.
The Story
This time, the treasure belongs to a long-dead pirate named Shaitan Singh, and the only man who knows where it's buried is Prithvi (Upendra Limaye) - a fact that keeps him alive even after he's captured by a rival pirate, Adhoora (Ravi Kishan), who impulsively torches the map before realising his mistake. Guddu (Ajay Devgn), who runs an antique shop with his friend Johnny (Sanjay Mishra), gets pulled into the hunt, and is forced to drag along his girlfriend's two kids for the ride. Along the way, the familiar troublemakers - Adi (Arshad Warsi), his brother Manav (Jaaved Jaaferi), their respective wives Rosy (Sanjeeda Shaikh) and Lallan's Paaro (Anjali Anand), and Lallan himself (Riteish Deshmukh) - all catch wind of the fortune and join the race, each group scheming to outrun the other before Adhoora gets there first.
It's the same greed-fuelled treasure-hunt skeleton the franchise has used since 2007, now dressed up with a jungle island, a giant landmark shaped like the letter "M," and a fresh coat of VFX.
What Works
The film's opening stretch is where it's at its most entertaining - introducing each pair of lunatics with enough energy to keep you invested before the groups inevitably collide. The pre-interval portion, where the entire cast ends up dangling off a cliff edge arguing about the treasure, is a genuine highlight, and there's a running gag involving Jaaved Jaaferi accidentally injuring Sanjeeda Shaikh that lands every time it's used.
Performance-wise, this is where Dhamaal 4 earns its keep. Arshad Warsi and Jaaved Jaaferi remain the franchise's not-so-secret weapon - their chemistry hasn't dulled a bit, and their scenes together are consistently the funniest in the film. Riteish Deshmukh slips back into comic mode effortlessly, and Anjali Anand is a genuine find, holding her own against seasoned scene-stealers and getting some of the biggest laughs of the film. Ravi Kishan's eccentric, broken-speech pirate act is an unexpected highlight too, injecting fresh energy every time he shows up on screen. Ajay Devgn anchors the madness with the same easy, seen-it-all comic timing he's brought to this franchise since the beginning.
There's also a sly, self-aware dialogue poking fun at the director's own filmography that film buffs will appreciate, even if it flies over the heads of casual viewers.
Where It Stumbles
The trouble is the second half, which swaps character comedy for straightforward adventure and treasure-hunt mechanics - and loses a fair amount of steam doing so. A ghost-themed sequence meant to be a comic set-piece falls flat entirely, several gags feel recycled from the earlier films in the series, and once the actual hunt kicks in, the plot becomes fairly easy to predict scene-to-scene. The film also leans on the exact same template as the 2007 original and 2019's Total Dhamaal, so there's little here that feels genuinely new, and a late emotional beat between Lallan and Paaro aims for sweetness but risks drawing chuckles instead of the tears it's going for.
The VFX is inconsistent - solid in some portions, visibly rough around the edges in others - and at just over two hours, the film could have used a tighter, more disciplined edit, particularly once the character introductions give way to the actual chase for the gold.
Music and Technical Aspects
The soundtrack doesn't leave much of a mark, barring a foot-tapping number and a surprising, high-energy recreation of the Italian anthem "Bella Ciao." The background score does its job without overreaching, and the cinematography is competent without being especially memorable.
Verdict
Dhamaal 4 knows precisely what its audience wants - clean, chaotic, family-friendly slapstick with a cast that clearly enjoys sharing the screen - and it delivers that in fairly reliable doses, especially in its first half. But the film doesn't push the franchise anywhere new, and a second half that trades character comedy for a fairly standard treasure hunt keeps this from being anything more than a serviceable, occasionally very funny reunion movie. If you've enjoyed the previous three instalments, there's enough familiar madness here to be worth a theatre visit with the whole family. If you were hoping for the gang to finally do something different, you'll likely walk out wishing the treasure had stayed buried a little longer.
