Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
“This is not Hangover, these things only happen in the movies, this cannot be happening to us!”
Daddy’s boy Gaurav Jain (Jassie Gill) is mortified when he and his friends wake up after a wild night of drinking and crashing a wedding. He wakes up to bizarre new developments that are a result of his intoxicated actions the previous night. The creators give a direct nod to one of their inspirations for “Wild Wild Punjab,” a buddy comedy that follows four friends on a crazy road trip from Patiala to Pathankot.
Director Simarpreet Singh, along with writers Sandeep Jain, Luv Ranjan, and Harman Wadala, serve a screwball comedy that is a mash-up of “The Hangover” and several Bollywood titles like “Fukrey” and the more recent “Madgaon Express.” It’s probably impossible for most film buffs not to think of “Fukrey” while watching this, since two of its primary cast members – Varun Sharma and Manjot Singh – are also part of the main friend group in “Wild Wild Punjab.” And just like any buddy flick, expect booze, brawls, drugs, drunken mistakes, mishaps, chaos, and cops.
Varun Sharma plays Rajesh Khaana, AKA Khanne, who is heartbroken after his girlfriend cheats on him and gets engaged to his colleague. As Khanne contemplates suicide at a roadside dhaba, his friends Maan Arora (Sunny Singh) and Honey Singh (Manjot Singh) convince him he’ll feel better if he goes to his ex-girlfriend’s wedding and tells her “I am over you” to her face. The men decide to take him on a road-trip to Pathankot for the wedding, dragging along Gaurav, who is scheduled to get married the next week.
Sunny Singh as Maan Arora is a template womanizer who loves to drink it up and is constantly wooing different women with false declarations of love. His character is the most boringly familiar personality in the friend group. Varun Sharma looks appropriately washed-out as Khanne and provides some of the funniest moments in the film as the drunk ‘Devdas’ of the group. Although Khanne also reminded me of Geet from “Jab We Met,” a bubbly, chatty, happy-go-lucky person reduced to a weepy mess due to heartbreak. But unlike Geet, Khanne doesn’t get to find new love in “Wild Wild Punjab.” But at least he gets to give his ex a piece of his mind. Or does he? Shh… let’s keep this spoiler-free.
Manjot Singh plays a variation of his many cheery-buddy type characters, the flamboyant yaaro-ka-yaar Honey Singh, who runs a 50-truck business. Patralekhaa Paul is Radha, a potential romantic interest for Gaurav Jain, while Ishita Raj plays Meera, a random college girl the boys meet. She embodies the stereotypical “cool girl” in “Wild Wild Punjab.” Why is Meera cool? Because she is hot, fit, can beat up grown men, and vapes without a care in the world. LOL. The film, of course, thrives on stereotypes, familiar jokes, vilifying women (like in “Tu Jhooti Main Makkar”, “Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety”), but a decent number of the jokes manage to land and make the viewer chuckle.
It’s Jassie Gill’s Gaurav who gets the most hilarious albeit ludicrous subplot in the tale, but he doesn’t add any zing to Gaurav – a ‘nice’ boy who is constantly bullied by a foul-mouthed, overbearing father played by Gopal Datt. Gaurav’s dad says nasty comical things like “sun bey chutiye, agar is shaadi main kuch bhi gudbud hui na, toh main 26 saal pehele jaake condom pehen lunga” (Listen fool, if anything goes wrong with the wedding, I will go back 26 years in time and wear a condom) to his son.
The screenplay for “Wild Wild Punjab” is amusingly chaotic, with the settings vibrantly desi in nature. However, the background music and the song-dance numbers fail to impress. Even though the runtime isn’t too long – 1 hour 49 minutes – the movie would’ve been fine with just one catchy Punjabi track. The climax is a circus of un-funny events, with a cliched ending that brings Khanne’s journey to a full-circle. At least the road-trip is successful.
If you enjoy comedies like “Madgaon Express,” you’ll most likely have a laugh watching “Wild Wild Punjab” too.
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