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Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit

ThePrint On Camera Videos In Pictures

Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

What Welcome to the Jungle can learn from Priyadarshan’s Hera Pheri

People in comedies now come well-dressed and sleek-haired. They stand in one place and deliver lines. The films are walkie-talkie conversations.

Priyadarshan is no longer a part of Hera Pheri 3, and my last hope of watching a mainstream Hindi comedy that doesn’t rely on offensive or brain-dead humour is gone.

Indian comedy desperately needs a revival, but that cannot come through films such as Welcome to the Jungle. The jokes make little sense, the scenes are overly illogical, and the film has no emotional grounding. In one scene, a commander, played by Vindu Dara Singh, orders Aftab Shivdasani’s character to throw fruit at the enemy as a weapon. The fruit lands on a landmine; it explodes, and somehow, the audience is expected to laugh.

It’s not that the jokes in Hera Pheri were always sophisticated. But they were at least rooted in the everyday struggles of the middle class. None of us would mistake a fruit for a bomb (hopefully). But we do struggle to find a job like Ghanshyam (Suniel Shetty) does, dream big like Raju (Akshay Kumar), and know an old man who behaves like Baburao (Paresh Rawal).

Why ‘Hera Pheri’ worked

The opening of Hera Pheri sets the context. Ghanshyam walks into a bank to claim........

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