Bollywood’s latest ‘masala’ movie follows the current trend of remaking regional South Indian potboilers for North Indian audiences. So, the Telugu film ‘Maryada Ramanna’ (itself a copy of the 1923 Buster Keaton film ‘Our Hospitality’) arrives in Bollywood as ‘Son of Sardaar’. The plot remains the same but in its latest incarnation the setting is the mustard fields of the Punjab.
London-based turban-clad Sikh lad Jassi (Ajay Devgn) receives word from his rural village in the Punjab that he’s about to inherit ancestral land. After singing a song from the top of ‘Big Ben’, Jassi heads for India. En route, he encounters a chubby pretty Punjabi girl Sukhi (Sonakshi Sinha) on a train and sings another song. Predictably, Jassi and Sukhi fall in love but it turns out that there is a long standing feud between their families. A series of drawn-out and tedious attempts at slapstick ensue in a desperate attempt to generate humour out of the warring Capulets and Montagues-style story.
If you find crude scatological ‘jokes’ and baddies being ass-kicked funny, this is for you. Otherwise, steer clear of this juvenile, crass and commercial film, which seems intent on insulting our intelligence. Alas, these type of flicks have recently proved to be extremely popular with audiences. No surprise then that Bollywood is churning out such unfunny trash with increased frequency. The joke is on us.