The anything-goes Bollywood comedy template is visibly frayed at the edges but massy is not always messy. So, one walks into Son of Sardaar 2, with some hope only to have it dashed. The movie is more mess than mass even if you are inclined to condone its many ungainly wobbles.
The sequel to Son of Sardaar, which held its own at the box-office in 2012 against Yash Chopra's directorial swan song Jab Tak Hai Jaan, is driven by the spirit of the original (which was a remake of S.S. Rajamouli's Telugu hit Maryada Ramanna, which, in turn, was inspired by the Buster Keaton silent comedy Our Hospitality) has little in its chaotic two and a half hours that can hold it together.
The result is a comedy in which neither the whole nor the sum of its parts add up to much. Not even a bunch of actors with proven comic skills are able to pull the chestnuts out of the fire.
Son of Sardaar 2 has plenty that is hopelessly amiss. Some of the pandemonium unleashed by a script that knows not where it is going contributes to making the film harmlessly and mildly funny, especially when it does not stray into deplorably problematic gender-insensitive territory.
Films that try extremely hard to make us laugh often end up becoming laughable. Not that all of Son of Sardaar 2 is a washout. It does have its moments – especially those that pertain to India-Pakistan banter and to the words and deeds of a simple-minded, humanist Sardarji who sinks all differences – but taken together they do not translate into a passably meaningful whole.
This time around, Jaswinder “Jassi” Singh Randhawa (Ajay Devgn, also the film's producer), after the great kerfuffle in the Punjab countryside that saw him caught in a battle of attrition with a vengeful man, ends up in the UK.
His legally wedded wife Dimple (Neeru Bajwa) has been away for 11 years and Jassi is desperate to reunite with her. She gets him a long-delayed visa. He flies to England only to receive a shock from Dimple. The lady wants a divorce.
Elsewhere in England, Rabia Akhtar (Mrunal Thakur) is dumped by her husband Danish (Chunky Panday). She sets out to find another man and bumps into Jassi. She mistakes him for the guy she is looking for; he presumes she is a lawyer who can stop his divorce.
Caught among three Pakistani wedding dancers, Rabia, Mehwish (Kubbra Sait) and the transgender Gul (Deepak Dobriyal), Jassi is sucked into a risky subterfuge. He poses as an army colonel to help a young couple, Saba (Roshni Walia) and Gogi Sandhu (Sahil Mehta), get approval from the latter's father (Ravi Kishan) for their betrothal.
The rigmarole that Jassi's misadventures trigger traverses a rocky path as Son of Sardaar 2 tries to tickle our funny bones in vain. It isn't the hoot that it wants to be. It hits many a road block, stumbles and ends up on all fours.
Cinematographer-filmmaker Vijay Kumar Arora's first Hindi directorial, Son of Sardaar 2 is frequently funny for all the wrong reasons. Parts of the film are so slapdash that it is a marvel that it evaded scrutiny by hose charged with greenlighting the project. What is served up in the name of humour is just a whole lot of unbridled inanity.
Promoted with the tagline “one shaadi, 20 Sardaars, no chills”, the film has more than its share of spills that make as much sense as a spittoon on a spaceship. Written by Jagdeep Singh Sidhu and Mohit Jain, it aims for the lowest of lowbrow comic tics and abounds in gags randomly thrown into the mix.
Much is usually made about the vitality of Punjabi humour but one isn't sure that the Bollywood version of it does any real justice to the community or the cinematic tradition that the film avowedly celebrates. Being robust is one thing, but sinking into utter foppery is quite another.
Son of Sardaar 2 revels in palming off buffoonery as jocularity and that has for long been the bane of movies like this avoidable follow-up to a film that went everywhere is search of the zany and did occasionally finds its way out of a maze of its own making. The sequel doesn't.
Ajay Devgn's Jassi Randhawa is this guy who is just as cluelessly conservative as he is unwittingly conniving. As his inner impulses pull him in different directions, the tussle of the character yields some mirth. The lead actor, set free by a screenplay looking for a reason why it exists, goes the whole hog.
That isn't a bad thing per se but since all the buoyancy is in service of the sort of fare that we have been seen times without number, it never catches us by surprise.
Ravi Kishan (stepping into a breach left by Sanjay Dutt), a consummate quick-on-the-draw quipster, is sporadically funny but the film places a huge load upon him. He has to deliver lunacy and make it feel more absurdist than asinine. With the script extending no help at all, that is a tall order.
Chunky Pandey and Sanjay Mishra (as the sheep-herding Sandhus' neighbour Bantu Pandey out to scuttle a big fat Punjabi wedding) are wasted. So are many others in the cast, including Deepak Dobriyal and Kubbra Sait.
Mrunal Thakur is the odd one out in every respect. She struggles to fit in. She is horribly miscast in a madcap caper that reduces her to a nonentity despite the significant length of time she is on the screen.
One technician who seems to have had all the fun is DP Aseem Bajaj. Making the most of the scenic locales where the film plays out, he lends Son of Sardaar a veneer of shimmering brightness that once in a while serves to deflect attention away from the banality that runs the film to the ground.
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Ajay Devgn, Mrunal Thakur, Kubbra Sait
