Son of Sardaar: Brainless wonder

Starring: Ajay Devgn, Sonakshi Sinha, Sanjay Dutt, Juhi Chawla

At: PVR & others
Rated: 5.5/10


Well, all these sardars ki to satak li. But mainu ki? Assi to was merely accompanying these brawny pind tey sons of sardard for all the meat masala on offer — meat on their chaudi chhaatis with dancing nipples and masala in their unending peg ke baad duels.
As I said, mainu ki even if bodies, tractors, bikes and cars are flying out of the screen every other minute and mostly without reason. Mainu ki if the exaggeration is slightly higher than the sardars’ sense of self importance. Mainu ki if the badey sardarji prefers to postpone his shaadi for 25 years because he wants to kill before he chills!
Mainu ki if I am made to get high on a Patiala peg of a Rohit Shetty-Priyadarshan-David Dhawan-Dabangg-type cocktail of unending and senseless slapstick which has more marrow in the muscle than tickle in the bone. After all, I have been wise enough to have left home all that grey in my head. Without those thinking genes, I enjoy all that brash and brawn of the flip side of Punjabiyat that Ajay Devgn ensures will hit you with the force of thatsava lakh ke mindless Sikh tey dauley-sholey.
Had you not known it is set in a remote Punjabi hamlet without the sarson ke yellow khet, the hullabaloo is such that it seems Sandy has hit the shores. Only here, what gets uprooted are not those fragile homes in New York but hapless bodies of goons beaten to pulp by one sardar too many. Along with those bodies also flies out some doses of retarded humour that sardars are infamous for. It is unabashed, it is funny and it is expected. But you never get to get enough of it and as the body count going up in the air increases, you wish fervently that there was more of fun and less of all the screaming and shouting that Devgn goes for to make a statement this Diwali.
One thing is there though. It is a complete masala movie. It slips from its high horse sometimes but that’s okay I guess because it is festive time and buffoonery of this kind has a special place in our hearts this season. Sanjay Dutt, all of brawn and a little bit of fun, does well to dominate the screen, though you fall in love with the comeback girl in Juhi Chawla who waits for her sardar to get over the revenge and get going in her direction.
Devgn as the sardar who needs to die, tries hard to get to your heart. Sonakshi excels as a funky Punjaban but gets a very slim role, slimmer than even Juhi. The Himesh scores are peppy though the swashbuckler in music (despite a hurriedly added pon pon pon) is missing.
Overall though, Sons of Sardars will make its money despite all the screen space that Devgn is crying foul about. And, just to tell you, there’s no scope of a good or bad comparison between JTHJ and SOS as it would be like comparing Pretty Woman with Hangover — JTHJ being quite Pretty Womanand SOS much less than Hangover.
Source: Published in The Pioneer, 15 Nov, 2012

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