De Dana Dan brings together Priyadarshan and Johnny Lever, two people, who are associated with comedy for a long time but haven’t worked with each-other.
It is very surprising that whereas director Priyadarshan and actor Johnny Lever have both been associated with comedies and made you laugh through their films, they have never worked together. The comedies that director Priyadarshan has made over the years have had no place for Johnny Lever, who is one of the finest comedians of Bollywood in present day.
It is not as if director Priyadarshan himself is not aware of the fact that despite making some hilarious films, he had not cast Johnny Lever even once. When asked Priyadarshan says, "Johnny is an excellent actor and both of us coming together should have been something special. I wanted to give him a role which should disappoint neither of the two of us. It should have been worthy enough. Finally, in De Dana Dan, I got a very interesting role, which I thought was meant for him. When you watch the film, you would see for yourself that how he actually improves the original Hera Pheri team of Akshay Kumar, Suniel Shetty and Paresh Rawal."
Speaking about Johnny’s role in De Dana Dan, Priyadarshan adds, “The role of a professional killer that Jonny plays in the film is a very funny character. He dumps people with chloroform. The situation in the film is such that he has been given the responsibility of killing somebody but he gets a wrong identity. He starts hunting down a person whom he is not really supposed to kill. All his attempts prove to be futile and how he keeps failing all the time, leads to a lot of humor in the film."
Though De Dana is the first film which brings together Priyadarshan and Johnny Lever, the importance of their association has not been realized because De Dana Dan also had a lot of other comedians as a part of the film including Asrani, Akshay Kumar, Paresh Rawal, Rajpal Yadav and Archana Puran Singh . The real importance of having Johnny Lever in a Priyadarshan film will only be realized, when Johnny Lever will have an exclusive role of a comedian in a Priyadarshan film. Hopefully, we will get to see such a film soon.
