How do you murder a man who has already committed suicide?” asks the rather intriguing Maharathi tagline. “How do you take the finest actors in the industry in the screen adaptation of a hugely successful play and botch it up in every way possible?” is what we ask back. For does it get better than Naseeruddin Shah, Paresh Rawal, Om Puri and Boman Irani, thrown into a plot that has been going strong on stage for two decades, being served to you in just 117 minutes? But a classic example of an as-good-as-it-gets cast and an interesting premise marred by slipshod execution, Maharathi is one of those films that leaves you disappointed — even depressed — because so much more could have been done.

Jaisingh Adenwalla (Naseeruddin Shah) is a neck-deep in debt, once-successful movie maker who now drowns his failures in whiskey. Rescued from a car accident one night by petty thief Subhash Sharma (Paresh Rawal), an inebriated Adenwalla takes him home and employs him as his chauffeur. This doesn’t find favour with Adenwalla’s young gold-digger of a wife Mallika (Neha Dhupia) or his attorney (Boman Irani), but Adenwalla turns a deaf ear.

With talk of a Rs 24 crore insurance premium making its way to his widow on his death, a drunk Adenwalla commits suicide in front of his wife and driver, but not before he challenges her to prove that his suicide was a murder. For a murder, and not suicide, would enable her to claim the insurance money. The wife and driver then join hands and devise a seemingly foolproof plan to pass off the suicide as murder, until the plot throws up another twist.

If Maharathi’s first half builds up the suspense to the right pitch, the all too familiar curse of the second half strikes soon. Director Shivam Nair tries to pack in too many twists and turns in an already convoluted plot, leaving the viewer confused. Add to that continuity glitches and unexplained situations. Why does Adenwalla commit suicide suddenly? How is Mallika left to die when Boman Irani, in cahoots with her, could have easily jumped to her rescue? Why does Adenwalla leave his property to a driver he barely knows? Such loose ends and a cliched and contrived climax make Maharathi slip down a few notches.

What holds Maharathi together, however, are a few maharathi performances. Slipping into a role which Amitabh Bachchan walked out of, Naseeruddin Shah is in top form. His relatively small role keeps you glued to the screen. Three releases in three weeks may mean a Boman Irani overdose, but the man delivers yet again. When she is not hysterically screaming and bringing the house down, Neha Dhupia does well as the greedy wife while one hardly notices a wide-eyed Tara Sharma doing the bungalow caretaker act. Paresh Rawal, who also starred in the original play (and slips into the theatrical at times), is entrusted with the central role here and though he does show flashes of the acclaimed actor that he is, he doesn’t really fit the role of a jeans-sporting street-smart thief. And wonder why Om Puri was given just three scenes?

In the middle of the mayhem, one couldn’t help but laugh out loud during a particular scene. After quite a few days of searching out the “missing” Adenwalla, Om Puri’s cop asks when he sees the dead body: “Yeh kaun hai?” Was he looking out for the man without even a photograph?