Wild Wild Punjab (2024) Review!!

Synopsis – Khanne has had a breakup. He’s upset, but he has friends like Arore, Jainu and Honey Paaji who encourage him to face this breakup head-on and move on. They embark on a trip across Punjab to help Khanne find the closure he desires.

My Take – Though he is often accused of promoting misogyny through his films, particularly due to the common depiction of males as victims, Luv Ranjan productions (and directorials), most notably romantic comedies: Pyaar Ka Punchnama (2011), Pyaar Ka Punchnama 2 (2015), Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety (2018), De De Pyaar De (2019) and Tu Jhoothi Main Makkar (2023), contain a certain charm and likability that manage to win over the larger audience.

At first glance, his latest story, which finds four friends on a road trip to confront the ex-girlfriend of one of them, seemed exactly like something that would come out of his terrain. A promising roller-coaster of bro-mantic escapades. But what one didn’t expect is an oddly strained and docile comedy that is full of ham-fisted hijinks and inane one-liners.

Released on Netflix and helmed by first time feature director Simarpreet Singh, the film clearly aimed to work as a mashup of ‘The Hangover‘ trilogy, ‘Fukrey‘ films, primarily as it repeats two of its main cast members– Varun Sharma and Manjot Singh, and other boys trip gone wrong flicks, however, finds itself lost in stereotypical portrayals and predictable tropes of drunken escapades, brawls, drugs, misunderstandings, mishaps, chaos, and cops.

Sure, there are moments of genuine humor and a scene that makes you laugh out loud, but simply told, the screenplay from Harman Wadala and Sandeep Jain struggles to bring the levels of comedic chaos it clearly aspires to have, mostly fizzling out without a punch. To make matters worse, almost every scene feels like something you’ve already seen before.

Yes, it doesn’t bore you, but it also gives you the noisiest 111 Minutes of your life.

The story follows a group of friends that include Maan Arora (Sunny Singh), Rajesh Khanna (Varun Sharma), and Gaurav Jain (Jassie Gill). Arora is a love cynic who has a penchant for falling in love with any girl who catches his eye, Jain is a meek fellow who continues to be traumatized by his abusive father (Gopal Datt) who denies him the freedom to live his life, and Khanna is a simple minded soul who dreamed of marrying his girlfriend and co-worker Vaishali (Asheema Vardaan), that is until she cheats on him with his boss.

And when Khanna receives the news that Vaishali is getting hitched to the very same boss, he is driven into a suicidal booze-hound. That is until, Honey Singh (Manjot Singh), a wealthy young friend of both Khanna and Arora, who owns a transportation company and loves his car a bit too much, proposes the idea of gatecrashing the wedding, which is merely hours away, allowing Khanna to confront her by stating “I’m over you.”

However, what they are unaware are the chaos that ensues on the way, like an already engaged-to-be-married Jain drunkenly marrying Radha (Patralekhaa Paul), picking up a drug dealer called Meera (Ishita Raj Sharma) just to make Khanna’s ex jealous, and of course finding themselves in cross hairs with enraging cops and a drug cartel.

While there’s misogyny, gun violence, and drug peddlers on a rampage, none of it gets the smart writing it deserves, for instance, conversations about dowry end with an accidental marriage and that’s about it.

Despite being billed as a comedy the jokes fall flat or punch down. The funny escapades are deeply unfunny, with the exception of one scene. A sequence where an illegal arms dealer, unbeknownst to him, teaches his opponents how to fire a gun at him is downright hilarious.

There are a few more set pieces here and there that still justify the film labeling itself a comedy but when we still end up at a veterinary hospital to treat a human being, the glaring faults become obvious again. It’s billed as a road trip flick, but its chock full of detours that last for several hours or the entire night.

Even the background music and the song-dance numbers fail to impress. Even though the runtime isn’t too long, the film would’ve been fine with just one catchy Punjabi track. The climax is a circus of unfunny events, with a clichéd ending that brings Khanna’s journey to a full-circle.

Nevertheless, I loved the bromance between the four protagonists, and their camaraderie is infectious. Varun Sharma plays an extension of himself and somehow an extension of most of his other characters. Sunny Singh brings the right mix of exaggeration and comic timing. Manjot Singh mostly outshines. Patralekhaa does well. However, Jassie Gill and Ishita Raj Sharma are mostly underutilized. On the whole, ‘Wild Wild Punjab’ is a bumpy road trip flick minus the promised comic thrilling adventure.