Sunny days again
BHAIAJI SUPERHIT Direction: Neerraj Pathak Actors: Sunny Deol, Preity Zinta Rating:
Some Hindi films claim they aren’t worth thinking about. Filmmakers use the infuriating line ‘leave your brains at home’ to justify plot holes and lazy writing. Bhaiaji Superhit addresses this by having Sunny Deol toss a brain in the air and whack it with his infamous hand. Leave your brains behind, this film appears to threaten, or else…
Bhaiaji Superhit knows how silly it is. Unlike Dabanng / Rowdy Rathore / Singham, which amp up melodrama and pretend their rape / revenge plots actually matter, this film merrily piles on the cliché.
Director Neerraj Pathak is aware he’s making a spoof, and Sunny Deol is in on it. Those films literally exist to make the hero look good, whereas here Deol clowns around draped in technicolor velvet as if styled by Ranveer Singh. (Plus, unlike those obscenely expensive monstrosities, this is clearly less wasteful.)
In one action sequence, Deol throws a spectacular double- punch wearing a tender coconut on each hand, like green boxing gloves. Yet his smile remains dashing and charm easy, so it’s fun to watch the actor play this Bhaiaji who kills indiscriminately, brings down buildings with a click of a ballpoint pen, and wants to win his pretty wife back at any cost.
Played fittingly by Preity Zinta, this wife longs to be won, but wants her husband to jump through ever-tighter hoops, leading Bhaiaji to kidnap an opportunistic filmmaker to get a movie made about his romance. Narrated by the inimitable Vijay Raaz, this tomfoolery stars gifted comics Pankaj Tripathi, Sanjai Mishra and Arshad Warsi. Warsi plays the filmmaker who — very realistically — goes out of his way on the sets to make sure the film’s writer doesn’t make money or get any credit.
Ameesha Patel, playing an actress, can’t bring herself to call anyone else attractive. On hearing of Zinta’s divorce, she tries to console her but ends up saying, “you’re so… normal.” Some characters speak in Bryan Adams song titles, others boast of lighting their cigars with cannon-fire. It feels like the film is set inside a joke. Zinta’s feistiness remains undimmed, and the actress should be cast in more films.
And Sunny, as a hero who is often hapless, hilarious and never trying too hard, just shines.