Punjabi Cinema’s most successful phase began with both CARRY ON JATTA and JATT AND JULIET winning over the viewers in 2012. And since then comedies featuring a major star and (almost) same supporting cast have been the safest bet for the producers proved by many continuing successes till date.
The latest, long awaited sequel of CARRY ON JATTA also follows the same thought process and comes up with a pretty safe film based on an identical set-up, story-plot (exact opposite of its original), characters and a typical format witnessed in many of director’s earlier films.
The pattern begins with nothing really happening in the first 30 minutes of the film focusing on introductions, romance, songs and a few comical sequences keeping you occupied. The plot gets revealed in the next 15 minutes based on mistaken identities and just when the chaos is about to begin, its intermission (at around one hour) generating a positive kind of excitement to see what happens next.
The second half begins with a usual song, focusing completely on the clashes between various characters for the next 30 minutes and then the entire cast comes together chasing each other forming the climax ending at a positive note bringing together the family clearing all misconceptions.
CARYY ON JATTA exactly progresses on the above pattern and the only novelty happens to be there in the climax when the entire cast messes with an ongoing play in an auditorium, as a feeble attempt to recreate the magic of the cult finale of Kundan Shah’s JAANE BHI DO YAARON.
Having said that, the film still might manage to fairly entertain the people who are okay with nothing new in their opted films or can easily laugh and get entertained on similar kind of situations and a few deliberately included sequences bringing in forced humour.
As a personal opinion, I found Sonam Bajwa as the most refreshing and appealing feature of the film along with Karamjit Anmol playing the annoying brother-in-law. On the other hand both Jaswinder Bhalla and Binnu Dhillon looked like overdoing it loudly right from their first scene and Gurpreet Ghuggi remaining the same as seen in his many of his recent films. B. N. Sharma unexpectedly turns out to be far less entertaining in comparison to the original and the sudden marriage without informing the boy’s parents can easily be stated as the most absurd part of the film conceived forcefully. The songs keep coming in at intervals without making any worth mentioning impact and its only the dialogues that majorly do the trick bringing in the timely entertainment.
Moreover, when the writers have to find lengthy situations such as two people hiding under the stage-prop of a buffalo and a weird hakim brutally hitting the patient’s leg as a cure, then it clearly reveals that they are actually out of ideas and have to deliberately create situations keeping the viewers engaged.
Coming to the point, it all completely depends what you are actually looking for in your cinema as a movie lover. If you can simply laugh at anything and everything then this might work for you as a decent, above average film. But in case you are really keen on witnessing new story ideas, situations and natural comedy in such ventures then this fails to rise above the routine, average film to be honest.
Besides sharing a seriously concerning thought about the extremely talented, veteran director Smeep Kang, post making Chakk De Phatte (2008), Carry On Jatta (2012), Lucky Di Unlucky Story (2013), Bhaji In Problem (2013), Double Di Trouble (2014), Second Hand Husband (2015) and Laavan Phere (2018), Smeep can frankly make films like CARRY ON JATTA 2 in his sleep too.
In reality, he is forced to do the same thing again and again for years, since his innovative, thoughtful story based attempts as Vaisakhi List and Lock (2016) didn’t work and he had to return to the usual backed by the market trend.
But adding as a friendly well-wisher, nothing is more dangerous for an artist/writer/director than his mediocre work getting accepted by the people and the investors asking him to keep on doing the same…….. year after year........ staying away from anything fresh or innovative.
That is really painful for a creative person………. extremely painful as a creator.
Rating : 2.5 / 5
