Member Reviews

All right folks, we are back in the labyrinth. For a third time. Lots of stuff that we remember from the earlier outings. Creaky two-hundred-year-old Bengali havelis. Locked rooms. Vengeful ‘aatmas’. Ghosts who flit about. And characters who spout their lines, and vanish.

They say that the fount of all Indian fiction are the two epics, Ramayan and Mahabharat. Rohit Shetty seems to have taken this old saying to heart because Ajay Devgn’s eponymous Bajirao Singham is none other than a latter-day Maryada Purushottam Ram, his wife Avni (Kareena Kapoor Khan) is the faithful Sita, and all the other characters play their parallels in this version of Kalyug-ke-Ram Ki Katha. The result is loud and tedious, and instantly forgettable.

Just like the earlier two Bhool Bhulaiyaa movies, kickstarted by Priyadarshan in 2007, the third of the horror comedy series by Director Anees Bazmee revolves around a phony psychic caught in the family drama of a haunted haveli. Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 opens like one of those The Mummy preludes unfolding a dark history from 200 years ago only to cut to the present, signalling at the wicked all the wrongdoing has unleashed, which Ruhaan aka Rooh Baba’s (Kartik Aaryan) goofball ghostbuster must put an end to by hook or crook.

Of all the improbable things in Rohit Shetty’s Singham Again, like a car flying over a helicopter, like the same car landing without a scratch, like gifted actors dialling down their craft to match the trite script, like six people writing that script, like Ajay Devgn mistaking walking for acting, like the film mistaking walking for acting, the one that sticks out the most is Shetty assembling half the Hindi film industry (an exaggeration but you get the drift) to combat Arjun Kapoor.

Sometimes, a film takes off with an unpredictably thoughtful ending. The beginning and the middle get written to lead up to it. Director Anees Bazmee and writer Aakash Kaushik seem to have had an unexpected climax in mind before they sat down to take the audience through a maze, keeping alive the question, “Who’s Manjulika?” With the return of Vidya Balan (Mallika) to the franchise, the entry of Madhuri Dixit (Mandira) and the tussle between them, the guessing game goes on.

There is not a single subtle bone in Singham Again’s action-packed, slo-mo loving body. While over-the-top has always been the signature of not only the Singham films but also of director Rohit Shetty’s cinema as a whole, Singham Again takes it to level next. Which really isn’t a good thing from the point of view of the art and craft of cinema but perhaps works in giving fans of this kind of filmmaking ample bang for their buck.

Rohit Shetty’s cop sagas started with the brilliant Singham (2011). It was obvious for him to bring out a sequel to it. But Singham Returns (2014) turned out to be just an average fare. His latest and third outing in the series, Singham Again, is better than the 2014 film. Hence, it keeps alive his Cop Universe, which also contains the enjoyable Simmba (2018) and Sooryavanshi (2021).