What is going on is always a valid question in Son of Sardaar 2, a standalone sequel to Son of Sardaar (2012) and an adaptation of the Turkish comedy Aile Arasında (2017). Vijay Kumar Arora’s film has the scattershot quality of the Golmaals and Dhamaals of yore, with a cameo by the Golmaal franchise director Rohit Shetty sealing the connection with anything-goes buffoonery.
Jassi (Ajay Devgn) travels from Punjab to England to meet his wife Dimple (Neeru Bajwa) but learns that she isn’t interested in him anymore. Jassi runs into a bunch of Pakistani women led by the feisty Rabia (Mrunal Thakur). Rabia, her stepdaughter Saba (Roshni Walia), Mehrish (Kubbra Sait) and transwoman Gul (Deepak Dobriyal) perform at weddings for a living.
Rabia bulldozes Jassi into posing as Saba’s father in order to impress Saba’s Sikh boyfriend Goggi (Sahil Mehta). Goggi’s father Raja (Ravi Kishan) is not only majorly into Sikh pride but also hates Pakistanis with a vengeance.
Valiant efforts are made to be zany, madcap, proudly loud, slapstick, irreverent. The best aspect of the screenplay by Jagdeep Singh Sidhu and Mohit Jain is the relaxed attitude towards India’s hated Muslim neighbours. Apart from this much-needed easing of cross-border tensions in the country that stirred the pot in the pre-Partition years, Son of Sardaar 2 is a slog through thickets of lazy writing and tacky scenes.
Among the actors who serve time (and earn paid vacations in foreign locations) are Sharat Saxena as Raja’s frisky father and Sanjay Mishra as Raja’s intrusive neighbour. Mukul Dev – in one of his final roles – and Vindu Dara Singh show up as dumbclucks modelled on their previous avatars in the first Son of Sardaar. Ashwini Kalsekar plays Raja’s wife Premlata, whose scarily thick eyebrows are a subplot in themselves.
The 13 year-gap between the Son of Sardaar movies finds Ajay Devgn worse for the wear. Despite visible de-aging to his face, Devgn looks too weary to play the bumbling and dim-witted but ultimately good-natured Jassi. Like an uninvited distant relative at a wedding, Devgn’s Jassi gate-crashes and grates in every one of his scenes.
The attention-deficit movie pays its most refreshing characters the least attention. Rabia and her posse feel like they belong together – and in some other movie that might have made better use of their chemistry and willingness for comedy. A radiant-looking Mrunal Thakur and Deepak Dobriyal’s deftly judged transwoman are the most memorable players in a tedious grab bag of a film.
