Nothing, absolutely nothing, is sacrosanct in welcome to the jungle. Language, age, objectification, racism, caste, disabilities, to name a few. Oh, and body shaming in all dimensions (height, width, depth), all bases covered. It’s all game to be the butt of a joke. So all the other scenes of this true equal opportunity violator are somewhat problematic. And when it’s not that, they are characters who belittle each other, all with the good intention of making the audience laugh.
They lead the answer to “Why did you get involved in this movie?” on his sleeve. “Money.”
Okay, before I leave the entire movie. I started laughing out loud at one scene and it became uncontrollable for a moment. Things were getting too silly. Also, once you accept that the idea is that the characters are constantly berating each other, some of the scenes have witty banter. But I’ve never had the courage to expend energy considering barbecue as a form of humor.
Then there’s the other usual slapstick fair: noise, slurping, people getting shot in the buttocks, etc. Oh, and characters talking to each other. All the time. To top it all off, they go ahead and make it a feature. The character is talked about ➡️ They lose track of what they were saying ➡️ They try to remember what they are saying ➡️ Other characters create more confusion ➡️ The first character remembers ➡️ And repeats the train of thought! I wonder how many extra minutes this non-comedy added to the almost 3 hour movie.
Speaking of which, did you just film a series of “article” issues? Sure, some of them will go to clubs regularly. But I was able to detect three leftovers after one “explainable” and one final credit. How do I know they had extra songs in their kitty? Well, they have one that inexplicably follows what I call the “explainable”, one before the end of the credits and another…hold your breath…during the interval! Not just before or after the interval, just after “INTERVAL” appears on the screen.
It’s notable that in this chaos and around 15 strangely written characters you can remember some of the actors. Everyone except Akshay Kumar shares the screen space almost equally. His act is as unbearable as ever. Arshad Warsi stands out because he doesn’t scream all the time. Jacqueline Fernandes might linger in your memory a little longer than usual because her character recognizes how dark she appears to be. Once you surrender to the quirks written for Farida Jalal and Kiran Kumar’s characters, you appreciate their performance. Also, we know that Jackie Shroff hardly changes his expression between films. Doesn’t she change her makeup either? That said, I’m not sure to what extent we can judge the acts, when the dubbing fails so often.
Aside from that, the writing has at least a self-referential element for many actors. As usual, this seems like lazy writing, although I suppose forcing it into the story takes some skill too. Given that, it’s surprising that there is a “Destiny vs. Choice” debate.
Equally praiseworthy was the conscious item number leading up to the end credit. Yes, no matter how much I complained. But most importantly, they answer the question “Why did you get involved in this movie?” on his sleeve. “Money.” Either they get a tax deduction or they make money selling a movie they know is terrible. Everyone wins for them. We lose, right?
– Meeta, a part of the audience.
