Cinemaah

Triple Deol

  

There’s a song at the end of Yamla Pagla Deewana 2 that goes “I will dance like this only” that makes fun of the Deol men’s acknowledged inability to dance—presumably because tough guys don’t?—as they stomp and flail their arms. Maybe they are saying this is the kind of film they will make because they are like that only.

If the earlier installment was awful, this one’s hardly an improvement. The last time, this reviewer had written, “In Yamla Pagla Deewana  (named after a particularly foot-tapping Dharmendra song), the character of Dharam, played by Dharmendra, looks at a photo of his younger self and exclaims, “How handsome.”  He calls himself Garam Dharam and boasts that women love him so much that he probably has kids in every street. Is this a tribute to the ‘He Man’ Dharmendra  persona, or a mockery?  Dharmendra was a hero in films in the true sense of the word, noble, kind, brave—how is turning him into a lecherous old man in a film doing his image any good?  Of course, he was handsome and had – still does—a huge fan following, but it is embarrassing to watch him and the two Deol sons keep up these self-referential surges throughout a very bad film, with just a few moments of warmth and humour to keep it afloat.”

That applies to YMD2 as well. Here too Dharam and his younger son Gajodhar (Bobby Deol) run their petty cons in Benares, and the son proudly calls the father “Kameena.”  The older son Paramveer (Sunny Deol) divested of the wife he had in the earlier film, is now in the UK, working as a collection agent. He thinks his father and brother have reformed, but the ‘ol man is pretending to be a godman and planning to con a troubled tycoon from London, Sir (!) Yograj Khanna (Annu Kapoor).

Back in London, a weird villain Joginder Armstrong (Anupam Kher) has eyes on Khanna’s club, because he wants to set up the world’s biggest mall (who even thinks up such nonsense) and keeps sending two clowns (Jonny Lever-Sucheta Khanna) to evict Khanna.

Dharam then pretends to be a Oberoi, a tycoon and gets Gajodhar engaged to Khanna’s adopted daughter Suman (Neha Sharma). Paramveer is witness to this con, but keeps quiet and falls for Khanna’s real daughter Reet (Kristina Akheeva).  Realising that Suman is not his real ticket to wealth, Dharam encourages Gajodhar to pretend to be a artist Q and snare Reet, who runs an art gallery.

For reasons to bizarre to contemplate, the house Dharam and Gajodhar live in is managed by a bespectacled primate called Einstein, who paints a canvas (thankfully kept off screen), which makes Q a celebrity—with just painting!

This is not the kind of film where one looks for intelligent humour.  Sunny Deol plays the Super Sardar, whose roar is enough to have armies of attackers flying into the air; and when he actually uses his fists, even Sumo wrestlers are easily felled. This character is obviously being built into a franchise, because the film ends with the hint (threat?) of a Part 3.

Dharmendra’s legend status gets him by even in a silly film, otherwise the only bearable factor here is Sunny Deol, who brings some semblance of sanity to the proceedings, even though he is well past the age to be playing the guy who turns shy and stuttering in the presence of a woman.

The film is meant for the Deols to be having fun and they do. The audiences have to figure out for themselves if they want to be part of the family picnic and the many in jokes.