Review Yamla Pagla Deewaana 2: Are the Deols paying tribute or sending up the Khans?

The Indian Express rating: **

The Yamla Pagla Deewana gang is back with a sequel,with more of the same. Papa Bear Dharmendra doing his senior conman act,Sonny Bear Sunny doing the good guy with macho muscles and soft heart,and Baby Bear Bobby doing what Bobby does. A plot that should shame a wafer by its thinness. Random characters popping in and out. And the only thing one can say in its favour is that it is not as terrible as the first.

And that’s because this one is not as shrieky or loud,not all the time. And it has one laugh-out-loud,near-brilliant gag. Of course,being what it is,it needs to have the Deols reprise what the Deols did in the first YPD. So we get Dharam and Gajodhar (Bobby) pulling off a fake baba number on the Benaras ghats. A rich UK based businessman (Kapoor) shows up,looking for salvation. Who just happens to have a pretty girl (Sharma) for Gajju to romance. Meanwhile,bada bhai Paramveer (Sunny) is busy demonstrating his dhai kilo ka haath,and ‘sau kilo ka dil’ in the UK: the first with a long,blond-haired villain called Dude (Kher) and his henchpersons (Lever and Khanna),and the second with a Punjabi-Brit ‘soni kud’i called Reet (Akheeva).

There is also,I must tell you,an orange-haired ape called Einstein,who wears glasses to denote erudition and reads a book about ‘understanding humans’. Haha. Don’t knock me,I was looking for laughs where I could find them. Einstein,in fact,is instrumental in the best gag of the film,which involves an art gallery and a painting that makes everyone cry (not because it is so bad but because it is so moving),and the media frenzy that it causes. If Sivan wanted to,he could have milked this monkey business much more (there is something hugely funny about the snobbishness around art that no one understands,articulated by experts in words no one understands). But ultimately,the film is about Dharam-Sunny-Bobby,so that’s where it remains. And the running gag that could have bubbled some more gets deep sixed by the 2.5 kg and more of heavy handedness.

By now,we’ve got used to Sunny doing this exact thing ― the sardar who wears his turban right,and gets ‘full tight’ on one peg. Bobby is the light-hearted flirty fellow,who in this one,is made to ride on Salman’s antics (Johny Lever takes off on Shah Rukh: are the Deols paying tribute or sending up the Khans?). This is what we fully expect,and they two of them don’t disappoint. But it is Dharmendra who is much less of a hoot than he can be: every time I see him deadpan to such little effect,I flash to the kind of effortless comic timing he has shown in the past.

A nudge-wink scene tells us there’s definitely going to be a Yamla Pagla Deewana 3. How about giving Dharam some blow-out fun stuff to do? As a favour to him,and to us?

shubhra.gupta@expressindia.com