Welcome To The Jungle Review:
You watch the interview of any 90s Hindi film actor and they will inevitably mention how often there used to be no script on set. Director Ahmed Khan brings back this magic of the 90s in Welcome To The Jungle, an anything-goes madcap movie which oscillates between funny one-liners and absolute brainrot. It’s a film about the making of a flop film and thus it tries to hide its stupidity behind the garb of meta-ness. It can be silly, absurd and often baffling. At a moment, it has Suneil Shetty’s face covered in cocaine. That surely sums things up.
Directed by: Ahmed Khan
Written by: Farhad Samji
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Suniel Shetty, Arshad Warsi, Paresh Rawal, Rajpal Yadav, Disha Patani and Jacqueline Fernandez
Sahni (Zakir Hussain) is a businessman who wishes to hide his black money as the elections are impending and the opposition coming in power will ensure an I-T raid. His employee Dubey (Johnny Lever) comes up with a master plan: finance a flop film and show a loss. For the project they hire Dev (Rajpal Yadav) and Das (Paresh Rawal), two out-of-work directors who are named this way only for that one punchline. They are also joined by cinematographer Nainsukh (Shreyas Talpade) who can partially see, that too only from one eye. For the lead, they offer Rs 200 crore to Rajiv (Akshay Kumar), a once-hit action star, who now only shakes his torso for Bhojpuri earworms. The cast list also includes Rajiv’s ex-flame Nadia (Disha Patani), Sahni’s dumb-blonde daughter Jenny (Jacqueline Fernandez), gangsters Anna (Suneil Shetty) and Romeo (Arshad Warsi) (who claim to be the brothers of Uday Shetty (played by Nana Patekar) and Majnu Bhai (played by Anil Kapoor) from Welcome (2007)), TV actors Rambo (Krushna Abhishek) and Jumbo (Kiku Sharda) for some Kapil Sharma-esque body-shaming humour, Bhojpuri stars named most Bhojpuri as Rangwa (Mukesh Tiwari) and Jagwa (Yashpal Sharma), and for unexplained reasons, Daler Mehndi.
The actors are assembled to shoot a melodramatic war film but soon they are dropped in a real border village with some real villagers (which they are told are theatre actors, lol). The hamlet is being terrorized by a group of “Mujahideens” led by Zatara (Jackie Shroff). For some reason in the 21st century, they still transport via horses and look more like Afghan invaders than terrorists. But then, we can’t expect costume accuracy from a film which wears stupidity on its sleeve. With a plot of actors being confused to be real army-persons who are trying to save a village, Welcome To The Jungle is basically Tropic Thunder (2008) with a tadka of Sholay (1975).
Personally, I can never wrap my head around the keep-your-head-at-home film genre. It often becomes an excuse for the makers to not bother with a story. But if you consider the plot itself as a redundant plot device, Welcome To The Jungle is occasionally fun, especially when comic stalwarts like Akshay Kumar, Rajpal Yadav, Paresh Rawal and Arshad Warsi get the stage. Just like the actors in the film, the film too seems to be discovering its storyline along the way. The movie seems to be eager to milk every kind of humour from speech impairments. Johnny Lever plays a character who goes mute especially when he is revealing an important detail, Farida Jalal (Yup, there is everybody) talks in indecipherable cry-mumbles and Kiran Kumar explains what she is saying in even more complicated Urdu mumbo-jumbo. It’s a film where you know that the mention of guerilla shooting will inevitably be succeeded by a beastly primate lurking in the background (“Gorilla” shooting, wink wink). There are callbacks to Welcome (2007), Phir Hera Pheri (2006) and a plot point picked up from even Bajrangi Bhaijaan. Welcome To The Jungle is a ludicrous, hodgepodge of events which works only when the actors and the audience are in on the absurd. However, it is fun to see Akshay Kumar get down his saviour high-horse and improvise some funny bits. He is hilarious as an actor who wants to hog all the limelight. The meta-ness can be a tad-bit on the nose but Akshay sells it.
With a barrage of army films inundating the box office, I expected Welcome To The Jungle to be more satirical than nonsensical. With Dhamaal 4 also on its way, at this moment Hindi mainstream cinema seems to be returning to the big-cast comedy-ensemble. A desperate attempt to get the mass audiences back into the theatres. We are being served either blatant aggression or numbing stupidity. Propaganda or brainrot, choose your pick, or just run for the hills.
