Cast: Akshay Kumar, Amy Jackson, Kay Kay Menon, Lara Dutta
Director: Prabhudheva
Rating: 1/5
The best thing one can say about Singh is Bliing is that it is not a sequel of the 2008 Singh is Kinng. Little else in the film is worthy of praise. Reuniting with his Rowdy Rathore director, Prabhudheva, Akshay Kumar stars in yet another movie rife with the same sight gags, unfunny puns and gauche attempts at physical comedy that have become synonymous with the filmmaker.
If a dog made up to look like a tiger isn’t funny to you, watch out, because that’s one of the finer moments in the film.
Kumar plays Raftaar Singh, a stereotypical caricature of a Punjabi, who whiles away his time break-dancing to bhangra music, drowning his face in lassi and emotionally manipulating his mom (Rati Agnihotri). So when he steals money from his father (Yograj Singh), Papaji gives Raftaar two choices — either marry a fat Punjabi kudi or go to work in a floating casino off the coast of Goa.
If you’re smarter than this film, you can probably guess what Raftaar picks. The ‘plot’ kicks in when a ‘kung-fu-karate expert’ and femme fatale, Sara (Amy Jackson), shows up and steals Raftaar’s heart.
The only problem: A half-Indian-half-Romanian gangster named Mark (Kay Kay Menon) has the hots for her too. The fact that Raftaar doesn’t speak English and Sara doesn’t understand a word of Hindi is milked for ‘comedy’.
This gives Lara Dutta screen time as Emily, a translator trying and repeatedly failing to connect the two. As the predictable love triangle culminates in a no-holds-barred fight between Raftaar and Mark, Sara, who has throughout the film been portrayed as the ultimate asskicking Lara Croft-like lean mean killing machine, who has saved even the leading man a few of times, becomes the clichéd damsel in distress whom Raftaar has to save and win over.
Watch: Singh Is Bliing trailer
As in last year’s Action Jackson, Prabhudheva shows up with great ideas for slapstick but none of the writing skills to pull it off. The screenplay, incidentally, was the work not of Prabhudeva and team this time around but of Grazing Goat Pictures, the company that made the film.
Kumar is left doing the same passive comedy as in recent films like Entertainment (2014), including pillow-fighting with his mom.
It’s still mildly funny when he does goofy things with a straight face, but it’s just not something you can watch on a loop for two hours and forty minutes. Whether the film earns a lot of bling at the box office or not, this film does not glitter, and it certainly is not gold.