There is a redemptive streak running across this middling comedy. A restorative impulse that makes it notches better than our other recent situational comedies about spirits and other UFOs. Son Of Sardar 2 promises us the sun moon and stars, and delivers something above a dud.
It comes close to being one. A dud, I mean. But then there is always that little spark which keeps us watching till the end even when a wedding sequence at the end overstays its welcome to the point of ennui.
Son Of Sardar 2 is better than the first film in the farcical franchise. It often surprises us with its pockets of genuine mirth, especially the female Pakistani foursome –yes, there is a sporting Pakistani angle to this ha-ha-thon—played by Mrunal Thakur, Kubra Sait, Deepak Dobriyal and Roshni Walia. The quartet faintly echoes Shyam Benegal’s Mandi in that the protective older women want the baby of the family Saba (Roshni Walia) to be married to her goofy suitor (Sahil Mehta).
For this, they hire an unsuspecting Sardarji Jassi (Devgn) to masquerade as the father of the bride.
The ever-dependable Dobriyal is delightful as the cross-dresser Saba, so restrained, never an ounce of vulgarity, Dobriyal’s is the best cross-dressing act seen in living memory in Hindi cinema. The writers Jagdeep Singh Sidhu and Mohit Jain should further explore this scintillating sisterhood from this film that sometimes upturns its own farcical rules to go beyond the precincts of elementary laughter.
Devgan plays the simpleton Sardarji (quite convincingly) who lands in the UK (Edinburgh, prettier than expected) to join his truant wife (Neeru Bajwa) but ends up masquerading as the father of the bride.
The controllably crazy first-half erupts into a messy out-of-control mirth spin at midpoint, with sequences stretched beyond endurance and the intended humour running on thin ice. But the actors remain surprisingly dedicated to delivering the drollery to a blissful closure.
Devgan is surprisingly good with his comic timing, more so than we have seen him being with Rohit Shetty (who pops up at the end quite unnecessarily). And the pairing with Mrunal Thakur is not the least offensive. Cleverly, she plays a woman older than her actual age, admittedly not very convincingly, though the actress tries hard.
Ravi Kishan is a hoot as the daft bridegroom’s father. His longish sequence with Devgn with the latter taking a cue from J P Dutta’s Border to play the bride’s army-office father, is an example of how clever the writing gets when it wants to.
But the desirable dollops in the comedy tend to wear thin, especially towards the end when every character is expected to fuel the prevalent chaos.
Somewhere down the line, I stopped caring for what happens to the characters. But it was fun while it lasted.
Son Of Sardar 2 doesn’t preserve the crackling climate of comic inspiration that it initially promises. It would have worked a lot better without so much Punjabiyat thrust into every song and every celebration. We get the point about the Sikhs being a happy, celebratory community. If only the characters were allowed to move beyond the din.
