Dhamaal 4 Movie: Dhamaal in theatres
There's a particular kind of movie that critics love to underrate and audiences never stop showing up for. The Dhamaal franchise has occupied that lane since 2007, and going by the packed house at a recent evening show, nothing about that equation has changed with the fourth installment.
Nearly Two Decades, Same Chaos
Dhamaal 4 is directed by Indra Kumar, the man who's steered this franchise since the original, and it arrives as a direct continuation of Dhamaal (2007), Double Dhamaal (2011), and Total Dhamaal (2019). Ajay Devgn returns once again as Guddu, alongside Arshad Warsi as Adi, Riteish Deshmukh as Lallan, and Jaaved Jaaferi as Manav — the core quartet audiences have followed through three previous rounds of treasure hunts, mistaken identities, and escalating slapstick.
Getting to that fourth installment wasn't exactly smooth sailing behind the scenes. The film was originally aimed at the Eid al-Fitr weekend around March 19, 2026, then pushed to June 12 to avoid a clash with Dhurandhar: The Revenge, before finally settling into a July release window to sidestep other major titles. That kind of scheduling tug-of-war usually means one of two things — a troubled production, or a studio that knows exactly how big its audience is and doesn't want to split it with anything else in theatres that week. Given the reception, it looks like the latter.
A Full House on a Weekday
Walking into the theatre with family in tow, the plan was to arrive early and grab decent seats without much hassle. That plan fell apart almost immediately — the lobby was already heaving, and by the time everyone settled in, the auditorium was close to full. This wasn't a quiet weekday screening. It had the energy of a release people had circled on their calendars weeks in advance, which tracks: the film had been generating steady buzz online for a while, from behind-the-scenes clips to a string of promotional singles rolling out in the run-up to release.
That energy carried straight into the auditorium. The instant Ajay Devgn's face hit the screen, someone a few rows back let out a full-volume shout of his name, and the whole room followed with claps and whistles. It's the kind of reception that reminds you these films aren't really being judged against arthouse cinema — they're being judged against how loud a room gets, and by that measure, the film cleared the bar in its first thirty seconds.
Bigger Scale, Same Treasure Hunt
The plot machinery hasn't changed much across four films, and that's clearly by design. It's still a treasure hunt, still stuffed with overlapping schemes and characters who can't stop talking over one another, and the makers have simply scaled everything up rather than reinvent it. The jungle sequences in particular look far more polished than anything the earlier films attempted, with wide shots that give the movie a genuine sense of scale on the big screen. A handful of CGI moments look a little rough at the edges, but in a film built entirely around comic chaos, it's not the kind of thing that pulls you out of the experience.
One gag does a disproportionate amount of heavy lifting for the film's humor: a mix-up between the letters "W" and "M" that spirals into total confusion for nearly every character on screen. It's a dumb premise on paper, and that's precisely the point — the Dhamaal formula has never relied on clever writing so much as on watching people misread each other in the stupidest way imaginable, and this film leans into that instinct harder than ever.
The Real MVPs
With a cast this large — Ravi Kishan as Adhoora, Esha Gupta as Aaliya, Sanjay Mishra as Johnny, Sanjeeda Shaikh as Rosy, and Upendra Limaye as Prithvi, among others — it would be easy for the comedy to get diluted across too many characters. Instead, a couple of performers end up carrying an outsized share of the laughs. Riteish Deshmukh and Sanjay Mishra, in particular, land some of the biggest reactions in the room without needing a punchline at all — several scenes get their payoff purely from a look on their faces rather than anything scripted.
Devgn, meanwhile, keeps playing Guddu with the same flat, deadpan delivery that's defined his comic roles for years, and that contrast — a man staying completely serious while everything around him falls apart — ends up funnier in places than the actual jokes. It's a dynamic that's worked for three films already, and the fourth doesn't mess with a winning formula. When the three of them share a scene, there's a genuine sense that something ridiculous is about to happen, and that chemistry, more than any individual joke, is what carries long stretches of the runtime.
Notably, the film never tries to be anything other than what it is. There's no forced pivot into sentiment, no last-act moral lesson bolted onto the chaos. It commits to being a loud, over-the-top comedy from its opening scene and stays there until the credits roll — which, for a franchise entry like this, counts as a genuine strength rather than a limitation.
Where It Sags
Not every choice lands cleanly. A few scenes run noticeably longer than they need to, and there are a couple of moments where the lip-sync feels slightly off, along with one or two reactions pitched a bit too broadly even by this film's own generous standards. None of it derails the movie, but anyone paying close attention will notice the rough patches.
What the Rest of the Room Thought
Outside the theatre afterward, reactions from other moviegoers were mixed but leaned favorable. One older viewer said it took him straight back to the original film. A group of college students preferred the back half over the first. One family called it the most fun they'd had together in weeks. Not everyone was as generous — a few felt certain stretches dragged, and one person mentioned Devgn seemed a touch less energetic than in his earlier comic outings.
That split isn't just anecdotal, either — reports out of the film's opening day noted it received genuinely mixed reactions online, with plenty of nostalgia-driven goodwill running alongside criticism of the humor from some corners. Which, honestly, tracks with how comedy tends to land. An action sequence usually gets a room to react in unison. A jump scare in a horror film lands the same way for most viewers. Comedy doesn't behave like that — a joke that has one person in stitches can leave the person next to them stone-faced, which is probably the single best explanation for why reactions to this film varied so widely.
The Bigger Picture
None of that mixed reception seems to have hurt the film's momentum. Dhamaal 4 reportedly climbed to the No. 1 spot on IMDb's list of most-anticipated Indian films for 2026, a fairly remarkable feat for a franchise entry that isn't reinventing anything about its own formula. It says something about where audience appetite currently sits — between the flood of Korean dramas, Hollywood franchises, and international streaming originals now competing for the same eyeballs, there's still a hard, stubborn demand for the kind of unpretentious, big-screen, watch-with-your-whole-family comedy that Dhamaal has been selling since 2007.
That demand is worth sitting with for a second, because Indian cinema's relationship to international competition has shifted dramatically in just the last few years. RRR, the two Baahubali films, KGF, Kantara, Pushpa, and Kalki 2898 AD have already proven that Indian productions can match Hollywood blockbuster scale when they want to. Dhamaal 4 isn't chasing that kind of spectacle — it's doing something arguably harder, which is proving that mid-budget, unapologetically silly comedy still has a theatrical audience willing to show up on a weeknight and yell an actor's name the second he appears on screen.
Final Take
Dhamaal 4 was never going to reinvent itself, and it doesn't try to. It knows precisely what its audience wants — chaos, comic timing, and a cast that visibly enjoys winding each other up — and delivers exactly that without apology. Some scenes overstay their welcome, the visual polish isn't consistent throughout, but as a loud, feel-good outing built for a full family in a packed theatre, it does exactly the job it set out to do.
