Comedy is the flavor of the season, and Satish Kaushik and Sanjay Chhel keep the Comic flag flying high with the fast paced Shaadi Se Pehle.
Forget logic, suspend disbelief, and you'll be rewarded with a laugh riot. Excellent writing and competent performances plus slick direction convert a far-fetched plot into quite a rib-tickler.
The story first. Ashish (Akshaye Khanna), a young man, down and out, has been wooing the girl of his dreams, Rani (Ayesha Takia) for five years. Five years? Coz that's how much time a down and out man, who's even cleaned high-rise windows from a sling and worked as manager at a mahila papad udyog, takes to be able to become creative director at an ad agency, buy a plush house and car, and save some 20-30 lakhs. Coz those are Rani's father's terms. So, young man first convinces future pa-in-law, who's always tried to separate Rani from Ashish. Worse, there's also Ashish's friend Rohit, played by Aftab Shivdasani, who's been trying to win Rani's affections, but thankfully, she only loves Ashish. Who, somehow, manages to get her family's nod and gets engaged to her, and even gets transported from Mumbai to somewhere in Europe for songs, and is all set to live happily ever after.
But Ashish is a hypochondriac who'll imagine he's got every ailment including housemaid's knee, and goes to a doctor (Boman Irani as a brilliant Parsi doctor) for a blood report. Circumstances and a misunderstood overheard conversation the doctor's having, connive to give him the wrong impression that he's suffering from terminal, stage-2 cancer, and has only a year at most to live.
So what does Ashish do? Instead of trying to get himself checked by another doctor or getting a second opinion, he acts on the opinion of his friend and colleague Shaayar Kanpuri (Rajpal Yadav at his brilliant best) and sets about wrecking his own reputation with Rani and her family so she can hate and reject him and doesn't have to be left moping when he dies. But of course, if he'd got a second medical opinion, we wouldn't have had the film.
And while at work, he gets propositioned by a sexy, sultry model, Sania (Mallika Sherawat doing what only she can do best), who tells him, "When I'm good I'm good, when I'm bad I'm better!", and even tells him something like "If you want a long memorable night, give me a call!" So Ashish gets attached to the strings she wears for clothes, and manages to hurt Rani, who dumps him publicly at a night club.
And before long, Ashish gets funnily caught up in the dangerous, bloody, messy world of underworld crime headquartered in Malaysia, thanks to a manic underworld don Anna, who is Sania's overprotective elder brother, and who hilariously pulls a gun and asks Ashish if he will marry his dear sister Sania!
 Of course, we know Ashish isn't dying, and the rest of the film is about what he will do next. And never mind that the film races to a completely predictable end - the journey is interesting.
The real hero of the film, apart from Akshaye Khanna as Ashish, is the writing and the direction. But after the writing, if there's one really funny character, someone who has you rolling in the aisles, it's got to be the little master of comedy, Rajpal Yadav. The man's a laugh riot, delivering his funny lines with deadpan naturalness. Of course, the situations he finds himself are very funny, just as the lines he's received from Sanjay Chhel, but Yadav literally seizes the day.
Akshaye Khanna too delivers with great comic timing and fortunately much less of the 'cute' grimacing that he had begun to overdo in recent films. He gels superbly in the comic scenes with Rajpal Yadav, who, incidentally, excels in the scene where he suggests that Akshaye acquire the negative image of a philandering womanizer and drunkard. Chhel truly sparkles!
The film has its tongue firmly in cheek throughout, as in when Akshaye and Rajpal go to check out funeral services and book chandan wood for the pyre and space for a samadhi in a local cemetery, taking off on a hilarious tangent about how the prices are bound to escalate and so whoever is dead and buried there will stand to benefit!
Forget logic, suspend disbelief. Ashish not going in for a second opinion is the first and glaring suspension of logic. As is the manic shootout between Anna and an over-the-top rival gangster played by Gulshan Grover with a dozen henchmen to boot rain bullets on one another and the henchmen die in broad daylight in suburban Kuala Lumpur or wherever in Malaysia, there's not a sign of a cop for miles! Guess the cops frown more on spitters than shooters our there!
Also suspend disbelief when we have Ab Tak, the news channel, actually depicting a heroic rescue of Ayesha Takia by Aftab Shivdasani (Rohit) with reverse and multiple angle shots of a frantic horse-back Zorro-style rescue from an out of control car. Don't they use single cameras? And what made the rescue newsworthy? We'll never find out, but the hero sure used that scene to find out Rohit was moving in on his beloved. And so, even though he has cancer and wants Rani to dump him, he rushes back to Mumbai to dissuade her from Rohit.
Sunil Shetty is doing an anna who'll kill for his sister for the nth time - for God's sake, someone tell him about variety in roles! But to his credit, this is his best performance in all those anna roles, and he's played Anna "Chaubees Ghante Chaukanna" with aplomb, excelling particularly in Sanjay Chhel's poem extolling Mumbai, which is hilariously written and superbly delivered. Shetty enjoys the role and is in complete control of his sequences, even looking very cool in a stylish hairdo.
Aftab Shivdasani, who's always furtively trying to win over Rani by fair means or foul a la Reggie  of Archie comics, actually looks the part of the unidimensional and even caricaturish Rohit, so he's cast and performed well.
Boman Irani excels as Ashish's doctor, and steals every frame he is in, especially when he's face to face with the dangerous Anna, whom he puts in his place like a strict and disapproving headmaster.
Ayesha Takia is passable, but Mallika Sherawat excels as the hot "I don't believe in love" babe and glamorous model, even though she sashays even when she has to walk normally. Now if only she would curb the tendency to overdo the sultry bit. Music by Himesh Reshammiya at long last has a gifted singer like Sukhwinder singing the lead in the album's best track, Akhiyon Se Gal Kar Gayi, and it features a hot and hip performance by Mallika.
So, a truly commercial comic film salvaged by brilliant lines from Sanjay Chhel and great comic timing from Rajpal Yadav, Akshaye Khanna, Boman Irani and Sunil Shetty, with strong performances by Mallika Sherawat and music director Himesh Reshammiya. And, above all, director Satish Kaushik. Go get your laughs, Shaadi Se Pehle!
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