Heropanti 2 Movie Review — Sucharita Tyagi
Ek hota hai Hindi cinema ka ridiculous level. Kuch bhi ho raha hai, villain pit rahey hain, baniyaan phatt rahey hain, hero udd raha hai, chalta hai hamaare yahaan yeh sab, rivaaj hai.
Phir ek hota hai……Tiger Shroff ka cinema.
Just….another plane of existence, it’s amazing.
Hey, y’all! My name is Sucharita, and right now I'm going to….try to talk about…..‘Heropanti 2’.
Our hero’s name is Babloo, because why not, aur woh chain ki zindagi jeene Yorkshire mein apni maa ke saath rehta hai, until his violent past comes back to haunt him, aur usko apni murderous hand-to-hand combat skills ke saath saath, hacking skills bhi use karni padti hain dobara…..for some reasons mereko samajh nahi aaye but have to do with national security.
Toh ek taraf Sarkar, ek taraf notorious magician slash mob-boss, a man named Laila, ek taraf Babloo ki maa, ek taraf Tara Sutaria playing a character who's supposed to be a billionaire video game developer, but instead is debasing the entire female gender in one fell swoop. Beech mein Babloo sir maar raha hai like a ping-pong machine.
Rajat Arora, Jagdish Sharma, and Sajid Nadiadwala’s writing is impossible to comprehend. Interval mein chal rahey “Lyra Lyra anytime anywhere” ads have a better screenplay. ‘Heropanti 2’ jumps between the present day and an ambiguous time in the past constantly, until it reaches a point where Tiger Shroff and Tara Sutaria perhaps themselves couldn’t say which timeline they’re currently in. You as the audience toh certainly have no idea.
It doesn’t help that chaahe flashback ho ya forward, har 3–4 set-piece ke baad ek gaana aata hai. While the set-pieces are mostly designed as a show reel for Tiger to show Hollywood ki iss kism ka action bhi hamaare yahaan hota hai, as Tiger himself has said in interviews his end goal is to work in the west, toh I say good for him because what he does indeed is a near-impossible feat to achieve. He’s very fit and jumps like it's no one’s business.
But I'm mad perplexed thinking about these songs, man. Until yesterday I was completely unaware there is a new Rahman album on the market. Sach bataao, kitney logon ko pata thaa ‘Heropanti 2’ is an AR Rahman musical. Just saying that line out loud I don’t know which timeline I am in.
This film uses Rahman’s music in the most bizarre ways possible. Ek toh na jaane director Ahmed Khan aur saare male writers ne milkar decide ki ki jitni bhi auratein iss film mein hain yaa toh gadhi hain, ya barbie jaisi sunder aur vapid. Toh ek sequence mein Babloo aur Inaaya ghode ke stable mei hain, to get a bullet removed from Babloo’s butt because can’t go to a real hospital.
In walks the female doctor, a white woman with 75% of her breasts out of her shirt, inexplicably wearing a party sash which says PROM QUEEN, is she a nurse, is she a stripper? Jaisey taisey who apni drool ko muh mein rok kar, teeka karan kar ke baichain Babloo ko sulaati hai, aur is procedure ko dekh kar Inaaya behosh ho jaati hai. When she comes around, Babloo is gone, and the bosomy doctor informs Inaya ki down the street ek “zombie party” chal rahi hai, Babloo udhar gaya hoga.
Cut to, Babloo, who’s just had a bullet surgically removed from his butt, and I use the word surgically VEERRRY loosely, is on a throne on the lawns of a palace that looks like the grounds from the firang college from ‘ K3G’.
Anyway, Rahman ki baat thi na. Toh yahaan gaana shuru hota hai “Dafaa….kar”, which has no business being here but you’ve given up at this point. Over and over Babloo sings of things one must do to live a chill life, and the hook line, Dafaa Kar, repeats…..until it begins to sound like Rahman himself, in his own voice, singing…‘‘The Fucker’’.
There’s no reason for you to believe me, here’s the song.
Is AR Rahman in on the joke? If not, who’s going to tell him?
To completely fill the ghada of ludicrousness, Nawazuddin Siddiqui plays a gangster named ‘Laila’, a grotesque caricature of a queer person, whose big, evil, inexplicable plan is to steal the entire nation’s tax returns sab ek saath on the 31st of March. I was frankly okay with the coiffed hair, makeup on face, until he, MUCH LIKE HIS SISTER TARA SUTARIA forcefully kisses Babloo, yeah they BOTH do it in separate scenes and it played for laughs aur mereko samajh nahi aata how this is okay.
But bhaaiyon, had to tab hui jab ek action sequence mein, Laila makes Babloo chase him through a sequence of giant puzzle rooms, and the second room…..and I wish what I am about to say was not true but it is….the second room is the Professor McGonnagal’s enchanted Wizarding chess set from Harry Potter and the philosopher’s stone. Tiger Shroff is on the chessboard, the giant magic pieces are moving, they LOOK just like the ones in the VERY first Harry Potter film, and I once again ask, is everyone in on it? Does Nawazuddin know? Does no one know? Has the Warner brothers seen this?
Aise kaise Hollywood jaayenge bhai jab Hollywood waaley yeh dekh kar mazaak udaayenge toh? Nahi toh tum Jackie Chan, nahi hai yeh ‘Rumble In The Bronx.’
Iss film ke ek-ek sequence ke budget mein aapki-meri- aur jitney 40 hazaar subscriber hain yahaan, sab ki gaadi aur gharon ki EMI nikal aayengi. Why this huge, disgusting waste of money and resources? Who is this film entertaining/aspirational to? Why do men of the entertainment industry get to play around with Lamborghinis, when female and other underrepresented filmmakers, and storytellers struggle to be let inside rooms where these decisions are made?
Who asked me to watch this film and review it? Who gives a flying Dafaa Kar?
Heropanti 2 is in movie theatres, you have been warned. Ab toh kar subscribe, aur kitni mehnat karoon main?
