Lock this Cash in a safe, will you?

Now, let me get this straight. Anubhav Sinha, a director who showed a decent amount of talent in two (albeit contrived) films, Tum Bin and Dus, manages to pull off a cast reading Ajay Devgan, Ritiesh Deshmukh, Suniel Shetty, Zayed Khan, Shamita Shetty, Esha Deol and Dia Mirza. Or I'll take that back and say Sinha manages to pull off a cast of Ajay Devgan and Ritiesh Deshmukh, because it's no secret that the other five probably do not know themselves how they have managed to persist in this industry for so long.

Then Sinha gets the music-duo Vishal-Shekhar to create a racy, borderline annoying but irresistibly catchy musical score. Sinha gets the foreign locales, he ropes in the high-speed chases and nail-biting stunts. He even brings to the table a cartoonist who bestows upon each character his or her very own animated introduction!

And yet somewhere, perhaps in the middle of all these "important" (?) details, Sinha turns around and realizes that neither he, nor anyone involved in the project, seems to know what the bloody film is even about. Moreover, Sinha surprises us and decides to continue narrating - no, not anything resembling a story - but a chain of more stunts. And lo and behold, there is Cash for you.

The actors, for their part, sing and dance and make a huge fuss about how they've got cash on their mind, making money all the time. What no one seems to have on his mind is how to give a decent performance. Ajay is the biggest miscast here - he looks bored, rather bewildered if you will, and quite uncomfortable romancing the considerably younger Shamita. He also looks far too old to appear in the title song at the opening credits, almost making a mockery of himself. Ritiesh is another talent wasted. Needless to say, the guy has a flair for comedy. Sadly, you see very little of it here. For some reason best known to the animator, cartoon Ritiesh seems to have blond hair. The cartoons, as an aside, are superfluous and obnoxious.

That Zayed is a lousy actor is no secret. Here his hair makes him a step more intolerable than usual. Suniel throws around his fake American accent like his life depends on it.

Of the ladies, Esha comes across insipid and hardly looks her best. She also decides to remove her shirt and fight off the villains in her sports bra, most probably because Ms. Shetty fighting alongside her threatens with her superior abs. Shamita, for her part, actually manages to look convincing as a hot home security official. What's sad is that her character is probably the most clueless security official you will ever see.

Dia looks stunning and is conspicuously absent from the title track (instead we are relegated to Esha's absurd facial expressions). She manages to do a decent job, pity there is so little of her.

The songs are shot with aplomb and are where most of the style is evident. Yes, they all contain English. And no, none are meant to be taken seriously. You will find yourself singing Cash, Naughty Naughty and Rehem Kare whether you like it or not. Mindblowing Mahiya, on the other hand, would have been best left unrecorded (I personally would have shredded the paper it was originally written on, but those are minor details).

Verdict: Isn't it obvious?