There is a recipe for the Hindi masala entertainer these days. You take a pan, heat it at a high flame of chiselled masculinity, pour some ‘no-brainer’ oil, let a hero trying to escape his past sizzle in it, add a villain who is more of a comic relief, garnish it with some pun-ny dialoguebaazi and then pour the whole thing on the audience’s head. Heropanti 2 is served.
Cast: Tiger Shroff, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Tara Sutaria, Amrita Singh
Director: Ahmed Khan
Tiger Shroff is Babloo again. After fighting the patriarchy by punching men in his debut film Heropanti, this time, he is a tech-savvy hacker who can control the lights in his room with his mobile. Not just that, hacker Babloo can manically type a ‘reverse code’ to access CBI’s internal systems while warding off the advances of two women. In the process, he encrypts the file of the audience’s brain cells. Hacker Babloo lives with his mother, played by Amrita Singh, in London. Mother (whose name we will never know) spends her time either praying for his safety or being kidnapped by villain Laila (Nawazuddin Siddiqui).
Laila is a magician who has many tricks up his sleeve – just that all of them end up blooming flowers out of objects. He is planning a cyber heist that involves hacking the systems of all bank accounts and sweeping the money that was paid by innocent citizens as taxes. In his words, it will be his ‘greatest magic trick’ and India’s ‘April Fool’s Day’ – because he’s planning on pulling this off on March 31. How far will you go to not file your returns?
His sister and Babloo’s love interest is Inaaya (Tara Sutaria) who is the sort of girl who splashes water at you for being a couple of minutes late on the first date and then doesn’t leave. She is the sexy lamp that Babloo places in a corner while he jumps over cars and fights baddies. Tiger’s action scenes are like dance moves we have seen before (Director Ahmed Khan was previously a choreographer).
There are no stakes. Tiger will survive henchmen, swords, guns, Lamborghini cars and even multiple grenade blasts – courtesy of, his mother’s prayers. Nawazuddin has fun with his character in the first half, then he bursts into a laughter fit of overacting. The screenplay dangles freely and the dialogues are just a play on words or abbreviations, especially if they are for expletives (MC BC- Main Chali Bye Cutie). The film’s visuals seem like out of a mobile racing game and the screenplay is dizzying.
The only respite is the music – while AR Rahman’s techno melody ‘Miss Hairan’ is groovy, Pooja Tiwari’s voice in ‘Jalwanuma’ has a certain pain. But all in all, Heropanti 2, will even make little girls (read Choti Bachchi) laugh at its plot. Just, ‘Dafa Kar’.
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