Exclusive chat with ‘Welcome Back’ star cast!

From the soundtrack, Time Lagaye Kaiko rhymes Kaiko with Baiko in John Abraham’s voice. The sequel, therefore, tends to amuse you because of its audacity to remain over-the-top, nonsensical and often amusing in the most ludicrous manner. Especially a particular graveyard scene featuring Nana Patekar and Anil Kapoor. The difference, this time, is that Uday and Majnu are reformed mobsters, and the prospective groom, Ajju Bhai (John Abraham), a feared goonda who just happens to be the son of good ol’ Dr Ghungroo (Paresh Rawal) from the earlier film. Maharani puts a condition that only after her sister is married, will Chandni will marry one of them.

A special mention for Kabir Lal’s skillful camerawork – he captured the breathtaking locales and man-made structures of Dubai in all its beauty.

Some of it is knee-slapping fun, some of it tedious, and much of it disposable.

“There really is no reason why the sequel, despite the collective clunkiness of John and Shruti, shouldn’t have worked in exactly the same way”. Shruti Haasan needs to work on her dialogue-delivery skills and ends up with awkward expressions in some scenes. After every punch-line he keeps reminding the cynical critics, mazaaq tha bhai, (it was a joke!) Indeed. The first week being the most important week for any big budget movie, Welcome Back will definitely get its money done by the first weekend as it is carrying a positive talk among the audience. The trailers promised a larger canvas, but Bazmee hasn’t been successful in getting it just there.

Add to that the spectacle of a beefy John Abraham peddling his wares, both as tough guy and lover boy, and you have a movie that allows the audience no respite from its inanities. Read full review here. Uday (Nana Patekar) finds he has another sister (Shruti Haasan) while Doctor Ghungroo discovers that his wife has a son from a previous marriage which he was unaware of. As one of the most bankable actors in this genre, Paresh Rawal delivers on what is expected of him and doesn’t disappoint his fans. Although he had played a gangster in “Shootout at Wadala”, his Ajju bhai in “Welcome Back” has comic flavours. Naseeruddin Shah hasn’t made an appearance yet, so hoping that he could liven things up in the second half. Post-intermission, the Ahuja and Shah track accompanied with some of the most awful CGI effects seen in recent Hindi movies, slows the film down. In a nutshell: dons face dons, lovers are kept apart, cons are hatched, and hilarity ensues.

Botched-up betrothal plans – there are a number of them strewn across this mind-numbingly convoluted film – consume a lot of the footage without generating a modicum of mirth.

Kabir Lal’s cinematography and Steven Bernard’s editing surely merit a mention. It’s not amusing that able-minded humans spend 150 minutes demonstrating to us what a LSD-fueled midlife crisis would look like. “We faced obstacles but still believed that the show must go on”.