Son of Sardaar 2 Movie Review: Ajay Devgn loses steam in a plotless, tasteless, abysmal excuse of a film

Son of Sardaar 2 Movie Review:

Son of Sardaar 2 could have only been released in 2025. It is the best time to refuel multi-starrer sequels and franchises no one asked for. It is also the time (strangely) for 2010s nostalgia to hit back on screen. The idea is simple: get people to theatres with a brand recall so that they know what they are in for. Brand recall. Bland recoil. The desperation to cash-in on familiarity is a post-Covid escalation for Bollywood. Films are made with a hollow belief that success lies in excess. They have stopped being anchors of emotions and are now substitutes for steroids. Stars have joined hands to save the business. Each one makes a stylised entry every 15 minutes or so. Singham Again feels like Housefull 5 and Housefull 5 feels like staring into eternity, bathing in the everlasting light of an ill-fated Bollywood spectacle. Son of Sardaar 2 doesn’t have as many stars but is populated with the same sight of greatness. Watching it is akin to peeling onions; your eyes will bleed in pain. Come to think of it, the entire film could be a morse code written by a frustrated writer who has had enough. SoS 2, says the writer. This is an emergency.

I say this because there is nothing to understand here, nothing to feel. You come expecting chaos and stay over just to know how bad it can get. Curiosity killed the cat and desensitised a regular Hindi movie-goer. The film opens with a disjoint. Ajay Devgn’s Jassi is shown to be married to Dimple (Neeru Bajwa) as the procession reaches his home. Right after this, we see Jassi being introduced with extreme close-ups of the face and long shots of a silhouetted figure walking against the sun. We see Devgn make a star-entry after he was shown in entirety rather nonchalantly walking in his wedding suit. What do we make of it? We don’t, we move on.

Director: Vijay Kumar Arora

Starring: Ajay Devgn, Mrunal Thakur, Ravi Kishan, Mukul Dev, Chunky Panday, Vindu Dara Singh, Deepak Dobriyal, Kubbra Sait and Sanjay Mishra

Staying with his mother, Jassi waits for the approval of his London visa so that he could visit his wife and bring her back to India. He ultimately goes to London only to find that Dimple is cheating on him. Distraught, he stays with a friend until his paths unwillingly cross with Ravi Kishan playing a Punjabi gangster, Raja. His son, Goggi (Sahil Mehta) wants to marry Saba (Roshni Walia), who has hidden her Pakistani identity from him. Saba’s step-mother is Rabia (Mrunal Thakur), whose husband, Danish (an ever-sketchy Chunky Panday) left her for a Russian girl. It is only destined now that Jassi and Rabia meet in order to ensure a swift marriage between Goggi and Saba.

There is an underlying developing bond between an Indian man and a Pakistani girl, but the film is not a bringer of peace; it doesn’t believe in championing love. The Pakistani identity of these characters is purely to flesh out small-time, juvenile gags aimed at putting down the country. If that was not enough, a scene memefies some hyper-emotional Sunny Deol sequences from Border (1997). Devgn’s face is morphed over these visuals from the patriotic-drama. He does it all—becomes Suniel Shetty, Akshaye Khanna and Jackie Shroff, all in a whiff, leaving us raising eyebrows in utter disbelief. It would have still been funny if the tone was not so tacky. It is also interesting that Devgn puts in more effort here than the rigid acts he put on in Singham Again and Raid 2 (Yes, there’s a little more to him than the low-effort finger-play dance moves in ‘Pehla Tu Duja Tu’). His loud antics, however, don’t make a difference to a confused script that doesn’t know what exactly to make of his character.

On one hand, he is portrayed as an innocent Punjabi, but that quickly gives way to perversion when he’s given dialogues that objectify Mrunal’s character, referring to her as ‘desi ghee’ at one point. Mrunal is vivacious but she is stuck in a film with an immature, mean-man energy, being called a ‘bomb’ by her own friends. Not to mention the vile punch-down jokes aimed at the trans character played by Deepak Dobriyal, who is there only to evoke easy laughs. A lot of “Main andar se mard hun, bahar se aurat (I am a man from inside, a woman from outside)” type derogatory exchanges follow. Promoted as a family entertainer, parents will uncomfortably squirm on their seats watching the film continuously make bottom line jokes.

Coming from the Son of Sardaar ‘brand’, there is nothing familiar here apart from the heart-pumping title track from the original composed by Himesh Reshammiya. The eccentric musician is another icon from the early 2010s who is growing to immense popularity in 2025. What many passed-off as cringe then has rapidly become the norm now. Changing times have infused newer meaning to his music. As for the comedy entertainers, they have only turned worse, high on scale and low on concept. Devgn isn’t just balancing between four horses this time (instead of two), he’s also striking poses between army tanks. What’s next? Cartwheeling on planes? Sleeping between trucks?

From such overly-used meta-reference jokes to the staggering runtime, everything feels stretched. A dozen actors comprise the star cast but the plot is reduced to a special appearance. And so, Son of Sardaar 2 crumbles on its own. It believes less in engaging, more in damaging. As it goes, the conviction in a capped singer’s nasal voice may continue to bring solace, but a dismal screech packaged as a melody will never find its way.