Heropanti 2 Movie Review: Not suitable for your brain

A still from the film

Heropanti 2
U/A: Mystery, action
Dir: Ahmed Khan
Cast: Tiger Shroff, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Tara Sutaria
Rating: 1/5

Heropanti 2 is the new gold standard in bad. That's exactly how ludicrous this new Tiger Shroff movie is. Coming eight years after Shroff's debut vehicle that launched Kriti Sanon and him, the film is a spiritual extension of the earlier edition. I paused for a minute to think of Shroff's filmography. His movies all look and feel just about the same. So, Heropanti 2 could well be Baaghi 3 (or was it 4?). Is the industry not expecting any better of the star, or is it the same ol' ‘why change what is working' theory that has limited him into signing up for a lifetime of banal action flicks?

Wonder what was scribbled on paper to pass off as the script that it passed the muster. Producer Sajid Nadiadwala and writer Rajat Arora, who have previously delivered the fun outing Kick (Salman Khan-starrer), have attempted some sort of cyber crime story here. I deduced a bit of it, decoding it from the dense dialogues that were packed in to supposedly deliver as punchlines.

Watch Video

The film intercuts between now and two years ago, focussing on Babloo - a super hacker hired by India to bring down Laila, who is waiting for March 31 to hack banks and steal the taxpayer's money. So far, so good. Then there is a love track between Laila's sister Inaaya (played by Tara Sutaria) and Babloo. She is a billionaire gamer who kisses unassuming men to irk her boyfriend. Fairly textbook arm candy, which we assumed Bollywood had moved past.

This Ahmed Khan directorial venture might leave the audience tongue-tied because there's only that much assault the human brain can withstand. Coherence wasn't a condition, so innovative action sequences have been placed one after the other, in no logical sequence. Getting Shroff to throw punches at everyone and everything that moves, making him flaunt his chiselled abs, Khan has ensured everyone walks out of the theatre saying, ‘Wah action zabardast tha!'

Tiger ‘tigers' (should be an accepted industry verb by now) as he jumps, pummels and dances with the sincerity expected of him. Then there is our very own Nawazuddin Siddiqui playing the campy super villain Laila. His disdain for potboilers is well known, so every time he is on screen saying a cringeworthy line, laughing devilishly, you assume he is making fun of the movie. He is the only one peppering this dull affair with a dash of fun. Wearing suits with feathers, aping Madhuri Dixit, he doesn't take himself very seriously and enjoys the so-bad-it's-good setting!

There is an odd, sort of zombie-looking track in the film called Dafa kar, that is scored by AR Rahman. The song captures my sentiments about the movie. Bas dafa kar, yaar!