Bollywood doesn’t like laughing at itself, which explains why we’ve had so few Hindi spoofs in over a century.
Welcome To The Jungle would seem like an oddity in this context, for Akshay Kumar’s latest release takes a shot at lampooning several Bollywood stereotypes and, amusingly, doesn’t flinch from spoofing the Welcome franchise itself.
There’s a catch, though. The third Welcome film is in no mood to give up on tested, played-to-gallery slapstick that has made the franchise a mass favourite for nearly two decades. The notions are in conflict with each other – a spoof has to be witty, intelligent. But Welcome To The Jungle deliberately keeps dumbing down its bag of gags, in a bid to ‘simplify’ the jokes for a wider audience.
THAT PAINTING TOPS THE GAGS
The idea of spoofing kicks in long before the sequel gets going with adventure and chaos. The film revisits gangster Majnu Bhai’s famous painting from Welcome (2007) – the one with a donkey riding a galloping horse. Only, this time the situation is reversed: The horse rides the donkey. Welcome To The Jungle is simply trying to say this: No matter who’s on top and who isn’t, in this franchise the jokes remain as nonsensical.
LOUD LAUGHS DROWN SPOOF SPINS
The shot at self-mockery is impressive, promising deeper humour to come than what the franchise is known for. Yet, the screenplay never fully accommodates spoofing. Every time you spot a scene that tries cocking a snook, loud comedy comes in the way.
The multistarrer film, third in the Welcome series, isn’t entirely an original brainwave. You spot thematic echoes of Hollywood spoofs such as The Producers (2005), where film production becomes a ploy for money laundering, and Tro (2008), which tears into the vanity of top stars amid a story about a crew venturing into a jungle to make a fake film. In Welcome To The Jungle, a corrupt billionaire wants to turn Rs 2,000 crore worth black money into white by making a flop film so he can cover up his ‘dirty money’ as losses.
Briefly, here’s what goes on in about two hours and 45 minutes of Welcome To The Jungle. A carefully-picked cast and crew, guaranteed to flop, is sent to a remote location to fritter away the exorbitant budget. It’s a patriotic film and, seeing them in military fatigues, local villagers think they are real army people who’ve arrived to save them from a dreaded terrorist who hounds the area. As mayhem ensures, the spoofs keep coming in, but only sporadically, amidst a rush of silly, over-explained laughs.
STILL, YOU COULD WATCH OUT FOR…
Still, Welcome To The Jungle regales, as a rare film that at least attempted to spoof – more so, in these finicky times. Watch out for these highlight moments.
(Spoilers ahead)
Superstars love super money: One of the most delightful bits involves Akshay Kumar playing, well, an ageing Bollywood superstar whose name is Rajiv (whoa!). Akshay’s Rajiv Kohli is an actor who has seen better days but now does item dances in Bhojpuri films. He is frustrated with the roles he gets, and so when he is offered a whopping Rs 200 crore to star in Welcome To The Jungle, the film within the film, he takes it. But at one point, when a disgruntled Rajiv says he wants to quit the headless project, his manager (Tusshar Kapoor) reminds him of the money he’s getting. “Hamesha paisa beech mein aa jaata hai,” Rajiv rues, and gets back to work.
The joke lands because it is bigger than Akshay Kumar.
It is aimed at Bollywood’s superstar culture, where the biggest male stars are often known to sign glossy but pointless projects for financial rewards. The sequence cheekily suggests that artistic integrity is a casualty once there are enough zeroes on the cheque.
Vibes lost in translation:Farida Jalal as Badi Bii and Kiran Kumar as Murad Chacha get some of the funniest lines in the film. The catch: Their lines never land. Deliberately.
Badi Bii is a comic throwback to the classic Muslim social dramas of Bollywood where women, especially elderly women, were always shown to speak in soft tones. Welcome To The Jungle amplifies the impact by letting the character mumble emotionally all along. No one quite figures out what she says.
There’s Kiran Kumar’s Murad Chacha, of course, starting off immediately as Badi Bii ends her inaudible rants with the assertion: “Badi Bii theek hi kehti hai,” drawing everyone’s immediate attention in the hope that he’ll explain what she said. He does explain, but in such chaste Urdu that, as a character says at one point, “khud uparwaale ko bhi samajh nahin aayega“. The line is meant to be an irreverent jibe at classic hits that often had characters speak and sing in pure Urdu words that no one really understands.
Old Bollywood hits often treated chaste Urdu as a mark of sophistication, regardless of whether the audience fully understood the words. Welcome To The Jungle exaggerates the convention to the point that communication collapses.
Blood on the hands, and forehead: Drama reversed often becomes humour. This scene in Welcome To The Jungle proves it.
Thinking the film’s cast and crew are real army personnel who’ve arrived to protect them, Raveena Tandon’s Zoya attempts to honour Akshay Kumar’s Rajiv by slashing her thumb to draw blood for a khoon ka tilakon his forehead. Not quite understanding the tradition and asked to return the gesture, Rajiv dramatically takes the knife, nicks Zoya’s other thumb to give her a tilak, leaving both her thumbs bandaged.
A tilak of blood was a high point in Bollywood melodrama of the seventies and eighties, especially films about dacoits and village marauders. It represented the film tropes aan, naan, shaan and the promise of protection. The spoof gesture is meant to highlight true valour doesn’t lie in bleeding fingers, it lies in action.
Sholay template upside down: Bollywood loves returning to the Sholay formula. There’s a village somewhere, terrorised by villains on horseback. Heroes will arrive and destroy the villains.
Welcome To The Jungle does a play on the formula.
These are not heroes, they are actors pretending to be heroes for the sake of completing a film. When Rajiv realises that the villains surrounding them are real terrorists and not extras, he is the first person desperate to escape – even if it means being branded a coward. The comedy dismantles one of Bollywood’s oldest myths: Screen protagonists must rise to the occasion whenever circumstances demand it.
Joke is on the film industry: The film’s most pervading spoof element targets Bollywood’s filmmaking machinery.
The directors of the fictional production are Dev (Rajpal Yadav) and Das (Paresh Rawal), branded as Dev-Das – that’s a playful nod to successful director duos like Abbas-Mustan. But where Abbas-Mustan belted out slick commercial thrillers, Dev-Das possess almost no creative conviction. Their decisions are dictated by the corrupt billionaire producer whose intention lies elsewhere.
The cinematographer on duty (Shreyas Talpade) is named Nainsukh – he is, ironically, cross-eyed.
It is a spoof factor that points towards a larger critique. The film takes a dig a commercial industry often accused of being populated by people who have no understanding of cinema, authority without creativity and technical responsibility with literally no vision.
(Spoilers end)
WHY DOESN’T BOLLYWOOD MAKE MORE SPOOFS?
Welcome To The Jungle answers that query. Based on a story by the late Neeraj Vora, director Ahmed Khan’s film repeatedly tends to push situations towards physical comedy (they’re not always funny).
There is a commercial reality at play here. Consider the film: It is mounted on a budget of around Rs 250 crore, per Sacnilk, and is representative of large-scale commercial releases that rarely have the luxury of being too witty for fear of alienating the masses. The film constantly explains its exaggerated jokes. The spoof as a genre has never been an easy fit given such mainstream norms.
HAVE SPOOFS WORKED IN BOLLYWOOD?
Bollywood spoofs have been few, and mostly seen mixed results. In most cases, the genre has been blended with other forms, including drama, action or horror. Here are a few notable instances:
Badhti Ka Naam Dadhi (1974): The laugh riot is directed by and starring Kishore Kumar. In the film, a multimillionaire with no heir announces he’ll leave his wealth to the person with the longest beard. So, there’s a hero (Kishore Kumar) and there’s a villain (KN Singh), and serious money involved – only, it’s all about beard lengths.
Oh Darling Yeh Hai India (1995): Ketan Mehta’s film stars a then-budding Shah Rukh Khan as the lead actor. A musical parody on corruption in India, the film was laden with symbolism and struggled to connect with the audience.
Bollywood Calling (2001): Nagesh Kukunoor’s film was a lighthearted jibe at the commercial Hindi film industry, seen through the eyes of a wasted Hollywood star who accepts a Bollywood project driven by monetary desperation. The film impressed the multiplex audience.
Om Shanti Om (2007): Farah Khan’s Shah Rukh Khan-Deepika Padukone starrer is perhaps the most successful Bollywood film in recent times to accommodate spoof elements among other genres such as musical romance and supernatural drama. In the film, you note a few merry winks at classics such as Madhumati (reincarnation drama) and Mother India(hero rescuing heroine from fire), besides several tropes from the seventies and the eighties. There was a hilarious sequence that takes potshots at popular awards nights, too.
Quick Gun Murugun (2009): Shashanka Ghosh’s film stars Rajendra Prasad and is a full-blown parody of western cowboy films in an Indian setup. It has a satirical context pertaining to the West trying to steal India’s dosa recipe. Critics loved the film’s audacity, but takers were limited among the audience.
Ramgarh Ke Sholay in 1991 spoofed Sholay while Ghoom (2006) was an irreverent wink at Dhoom. The 2009 release, Dhoondte Reh Jaoge, rehashed the Hollywood film, The Producers (2005), traces of which can also be traced in Welcome To The Jungle. These films, however, didn’t see much luck at the box office.
Welcome To The Jungle joins the list, only just and in a half-hearted way
– Ends
