Judwaa 2 Movie Review

This is the kind of stupid comedy you were confronted with in the 1990s. It may have been considered entertainment then, but now looks embarrassingly crass. Popular cinema is a generational thing, and the jokes in this Hindi movie have been lying on the kitchen shelf in an achaar jar for two decades, and have passed their laugh-by-date a long time ago.

Furthermore, it is target based humour; almost as if the writer and director had drawn up a hit list of people from which to derive their humour. About twins separated at birth – one a tapori from Mumbai and the other a musician in London – the movie begins with its first quarry, folk dancers in the Congo. Raja (Varun Dhawan) is in trouble with local toughs and lawmakers in Mumbai, so he wants to start a new life abroad. He visits a travel agent called Pappu Passport (Johnny Lever) who charges varied rates for getting passports and visas, depending on the cultural sophistication of the nation you want to travel to. The cheapest on his budget is the Congo, and so he plays a video of Africans swaying to a beat. Everyone laughs at the sheer ridiculousness of anyone wanting to go to Africa, and Pappu Passport does a jig in imitation of the dancers. The most expensively priced destination turns out to be London, and so Raja and his ageing and lisping friend (Rajpal Yadav) decide to fly there.

Shortly after, in a studio set-up of an aeroplane cabin, Raja takes off for London and is instantly touchy and feely, under the airline blanket, with a shapely co-passenger he has just met that moment (Jacqueline Fernandez). Once in the big city, he gets a job as a Pizza delivery boy, and this gives him the opportunity to encounter a wider range of people he can make fun of. One of his victims is a middle-aged woman (Upasana Singh), the mother of the girl that Raja’s London based twin, Prem, is currently wooing. She has a soft spot for younger men, and is disdainfully referred to as an old hag by Raja. The abused mother, in turn, tells her daughter (Taapsee Pannu) that being kissed, forcibly or otherwise, is fine as long as it leads to a marriage with a rich man. It seems that all the characters in this film are instructed by the racist, sexist and insensitive script of Judwaa to be politically incorrect, with extreme prejudice.

Then, after short listing people with infirmities and disabilities, and after having victimised all of them in quick succession – including people with mental challenges, speech impediments and obesity – the movie ends up as a pointless action movie. The tough tapori and his gentleman twin, meet the goons who tormented their parents years ago, and put them in their places.

By the time you are done with Judwaa 2 you end up with extreme distaste towards the film star, the writer, and the director, who have delivered this atavistic garbage for movie hall circulation, on the very eve of the auspicious festival of Dussehra.

BollywoodcinemaDavid DhawanJacqueline Fernandesmovie reviewVarun Dhawan