Film Review - Welcome Back

Sorry Bhai

Film: Welcome Back

Cast: Anil Kapoor, Nana Patekar, John Abraham,  Shruti Hassan

Directed by: Anees Bazmee

Duration: 2 hrs 27 mins

Rating:  * 1 / 2

Almost a decade after Welcome, which was no great shakes by any stretch of imagination but nevertheless was good enough for a few silly laughs, we have the sequel in the form of Welcome Back.  As the audience, we were surely much better off if they hadn’t come back. It is not worth a wada-pav, and a big ensemble cast has just been cobbled together to create some kind of chaos to pass off as a story.  This is sheer lazy writing that too at its worst.    

So the original story has been tweaked just a little bit here. The two buddies,  Uday Shetty (Nana Patekar) and Majnu (Anil Kapoor) have given up their erstwhile profession of bhaigiri and have settled in Dubai. There are more characters and complications here than the on-going Indrani saga. Maybe not quite, but you get the picture.  Dr. Gungroo (Pareh Rawal) discovers that he has a step-son (John Abraham, desperately in need of a crash course in acting) and on the other side of the planet, Uday discovers that he has a step sister (Shruti Hassan).  

The two friends meanwhile are on the radar of con women, one posing as a Maharani (Dimple Kapadia in an unworthy role) and the other a princess (Ankita Shrivastava, who needs to start with the ABC of acting) and both of them fall for the young lady. More chaos when a blind bad guy (Nasseurddin Shah) and his son (Shiney  Ahuja in a pink jacket) land on the scene.

One outlandish episode is followed by another and looks the dialogues were written with severe stress on the grey cells. “Jab maine chunaav me vote daala hi nahi toh mukhyamantri mera kaise ho gaya?” says Paresh Rawal trying to understand the existence of his step son. “Inke ghar mein ladies ke naam pe chipkali bhi nahi hain” whatever that is supposed to mean. 

It opens with a pixellated shot of Dubai and ends with climax that has some tacky CGI effects.  There is also a scene where a characters jumps from the one camels hump to another to save the don from a sandstorm.  Not sure whom we should feel sorry for, the camel or the audience who had to sit through this baloney. 

The acting is equally atrocious – Nana Patekar and Anil Kapoor manage to hold fort, but otherwise it is all downhill. 

The only relevant line in the film is where a character says – “Dimaag ki naas ko mat phaad” My sentiments exactly. 

 Published in The Navhind Times on 6th Sept. 2015
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