Jai Ho: No Sallu kind of film

Jai Ho

Starring: Salman Khan, Tabu, Danny Denzongpa, Daisy Shah, Nadira Babbar, Genelia Dsouza, Suniel Shetty

Rated: 5/10

This one is no ‘Yo Sallu’ film with all the latka jhatka with heroineji and muscle-wuscle with nincompoopish villains. It is more of an unexplained chapter out of Sallu Bhai’s larger than life NGO ambitions than his usual Pandeyji maaroing ceetee existence.

Aam aadmi is the flavour of the season and of this film (really?) too, though mind you, here the aam aadmi in Sallu the Bhai himself and as we know him he can do about anything —walk into the Home Minister’s den and kill his son-in-law and son; taken on an army (read political workers) of gundaas and dump them by the wayside without even flicking enough muscle and, of course, in between singing and dancing with a hyper heroineji who wears pink panties throughout the film and keeps dancing for no rhyme or reason.

Why Sallu Bhai would attempt this one is confusing. But he has been doing confusing things in real life too off late (like saying ‘I like Modi but will vote for Priya Dutt’) so this one seems to be another step in that direction. As is his intent, his film too is a mish mash of neither here nor there effort desperately cashing in on his star power — and failing this time round.

To top it all, the film looks like a kind of reunion of Bollywood bygones. Wonder what an actress of Tabu’s calibre is doing as Sallu Bhai’s behen in a silly film like this? Genelia D’Souza jumps off a ledge because there is no one to write her exam and she is has no hands of her own! There’s Mahesh Majhrekar too — driving an auto from time to time — and doing nothing else! And how can one forget Suniel Shetty who is in the Army now and fulfills the task of driving a tank on to a super highway to give the autowallah his escape route and next instruction. Even Majhrekar as the autowallah looks stunned about why Shetty would be made to do something like this!

Even for Sallu fans, this one will be hard to digest, with or without the length of the film. But if you want to help the filmy humanity, bus kinhi teen aamiyon ki madad kar dena aur unse kehna aur teen aamiyon ko bata dena ki who yeh film dekhne na jayen!

Really, why would Sallu the Bhai go in for making such a non-film film. There is hardly any drama in the movie, the star cast looks glazed and the story is as thin as thin can be. 

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 26 January, 2014