Welcome To The Jungle Movie Review: Remember Airplane, Disaster Movie and This Is The End? Hollywood has toyed with parodies and spoofs for decades. In Bollywood, what we get are self-aware tropes woven into mainstream comedies. And the latest to join the ranks of Quick Gun Murugun, Dhoondte Reh Jaoge and Phone Bhoot is Welcome To The Jungle.
The idea alone is what makes it, well, different. Taking the reins from Anees Bazmee is Ahmed Khan, who remains unapologetic about the tone of his film right from the word go. “Welcome welcome welcome, yaani teen baar welcome. Yeh hai Welcome 3,” announces a character in the first scene. Over the next 2 hours 45 minutes, the title of the film gets repeated in public service, lest you forget!The film revolves around a business tycoon, a Vijay Mallya lookalike, who decides to evade his tax-related crimes by putting together a Rs 2000 crore film. The catch? It should bomb upon release. His secretary Dubey and blonde daughter Jenny approaches flop director duo Dev and Das and visually challenged DoP Nayansukh to helm this film by bringing together a bunch of flop actors.They rope in Rajiv, a has-been Bollywood star, who now works in Bhojpuri films. Jenny is set to play the female protagonist along with Nadia, Rajiv’s former lover superstar. Dev and Das are also forced to sign mafia dons Romeo and Anna (Uday Shetty and Majnu’s brothers) to avoid paying back the Rs 2.5 lakh they owe them. Two television stars, a Punjabi singer and two side characters also sign the film.
In a strange turn of events, these actors get caught up in a dangerous situation in Azadganj in PoK, which is often frequented by Mujahideen leader Zatara. In an even stranger climax sequence, they’re required to take on the roles of real army officials and fight Zatara and his gang to protect the village that’s filled with quirky characters, most of who speak unintelligibly.
Penned by late Neeraj Vora, Welcome To The Jungle stands out for its many meta jokes. In one of the funniest scenes, we see an emotional Zoya (played by Raveena Tandon), a resident of Azadganj, responsible for imparting the film its melodramatic quotient, telling Akshay Kumar’s Rajiv, ‘Kahan the tum bees saal se?’ On paper, it’s just another line in the screenplay.
