Welcome to the Jungle

At 164 minutes and 50 seconds, Welcome to the Jungle doesn’t just overstay its welcome, it practically moves in. The third film in the Welcome franchise arrives with a gargantuan ensemble cast, an enormous budget and plenty of spectacle and songs. What it delivers is a chaotic, overstuffed comedy with very little jungle and an awful lot of mangled storytelling. The film opens with Johnny Lever’s character, Dubey, saying ‘This is Welcome’ three times, followed by ‘Teen baar welcome or Welcome 3’. If you want to qualify the tone of humour, it’s summed up right there—pedestrian, over-stated, self-congratulating.

Leave your brains behind, advise some filmmakers. Leave your political correctness also behind, and stop bristling at every perceived slight, would be another advisory for the third instalment of Welcome. Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder (2008), the source material for a story credited to late writer Neeraj Vora, had also come under fire for unabashed comedy over disabilities and coloured faces. So if you are the kind that’s sensitive about say, jibes at high-flown Urdu, stay home. Bengali, Parsee Gujarati and Tamizh have had their turns as comic material. Shouldn’t be a problem if there’s some fun with Urdu but if you’re the touchy type, ghar mein baitho. Because Ahmed Khan and dialogue writer Farhad Samji have a joke all written and ready for every known face in the large star cast.

फिल्में दो तरह की होती हैं। एक तो वे जिन्हें देखने का फैसला आमतौर दर्शक लोग रिव्यू आदि जानने के बाद करते हैं। तारीफें सुन लीं तो चले गए, बुराई सुन ली तो छोड़ दिया। दूसरी तरह की फिल्में वे होती हैं जिन्हें रिव्यू की ज़रूरत ही नहीं होती। लिखने वाले सिर पटकें या छाती पीटें, देखने वाले इन्हें देख ही लेते हैं। ‘वैलकम टू द जंगल’ इसी तरह की फिल्म है। दर्शक भी दो तरह के होते हैं। एक तो वे जो फिल्मों को देखने का फैसला उनके बारे में जानने के बाद ही करते हैं। कहीं से तारीफें सुनीं तो देख आए, बुराई पता चली तो छोड़ दिया। दूसरी तरह के दर्शक वे होते हैं जिन्हें फर्क ही नहीं पड़ता कि रिव्यू कैसे हैं। ‘वैलकम टू द जंगल’ ऐसे ही दर्शकों के लिए है। जिस फिल्म को फरहाद सामजी ने लिखा हो और अहमद खान ने बनाया हो उससे किसी किस्म के सयानेपन की उम्मीद लगाने वाले से बड़ा बेवकूफ कोई नहीं हो सकता। ज़रूर इन के पास फिल्म इंडस्ट्री के बड़े-बड़े लोगों के काले कारनामों के वीडियो होंगे, वरना यूं ही हर कोई इन पर मेहरबान नहीं होता। खैर, हमें तो शर्म स्वर्गीय नीरज वोरा जी को याद करके आ रही है जिनकी लिखी कहानी इन हाथों में आ पड़ी।

Welcome to the Jungle is that attention-seeking kid in class who loves playing the fool so much that not even he can tell when he accidentally sounds funny and smart. Ahmed Khan’s crowded action-comedy is staged as the third film in the Welcome franchise, but it’s really just Tropic Thunder given the Farah Khan treatment. Ben Stiller’s 2008 satire about four vain actors who inadvertently invite real-world dangers during a guerilla film shoot in a jungle is ‘adapted’ into a Bollywood caper about an incompetent movie crew who get mistaken for the Indian army during a patriotic shoot in a crisis-stricken border village. The meta-ness is the main character, of course. There’s Akshay Kumar self-referencing his Khiladi and Mohra days, Suniel Shetty named ‘Anna’ Shetty, Raveena Tandon taunting Kumar for “20 years of neglection,” Arshad Warsi paraphrasing his own Jolly LLB lines, Jackie Shroff as a kohl-eyed terrorist, Farida Jalal playing a dramatic old mother India whose ‘dialogue’ nobody understands, Jacqueline Fernandez as an airheaded blonde, and so on.

When the first Welcome came out in 2007, the comic camaraderie between Anil Kapoor and Nana Patekar as Majnu and Uday delivered on its laugh out loud promise. With the second one, Welcome Back, the madness appeared to be losing its edge save for the lone, loony graveyard scene elevated by Anil and Nana’s superbness in a leave-your-brains-behind brand of comedy. Third time’s the charm? If chuckling five times in three hours is the new definition of hilarity, sure, why not? Welcome To The Jungle’s crowded chaos strays wholly from its loony gangsters theme to achieve its ‘big is better’ beliefs. Director Ahmed Khan replaces Anees Bazmee for this sillier-by-the-second spectacle starring a swarm of stars. As a matter of fact, one hour of its 164 minutes long circus is spent introducing its unending stock of characters as part of Welcome To The Jungle’s grand humorous plan.

An action-comedy that never finds its way out of the woods, Welcome to the Jungle jangles along mindlessly down a messy path. It delivers chaos, cacophony and confusion in bushels. Like it or lump it. The film gives an unwieldy cast the kind of freedom that only a muddled, overstuffed screenplay can. The actors stop at nothing, hamming it up like there is no tomorrow. While they have a ball, and then some, the Firoz Nadiadwala-produced film, directed by Ahmed Khan (who has toted up quite a few sequels and takes over the reins of this one from Anees Bazmee), lurches merrily from one massive wobble to another.