Hungama 2 REVIEW: Shilpa Shetty, Meezan Jaffery starrer is less ‘hungama’ and more noise

Movie: Hungama 2

Cast: Paresh Rawal, Ashutosh Rana, Meezan Jaffery, Pranitha, Shilpa Shetty, Rajpal Yadav, Tiku Talsania, Manoj Joshi
Director: Priyadarshan
Bubble rating: 2 stars

An ardent fan of Hindi cinema and ‘slapstick comedy‘ can swear by how Hungama (2003) had left them in splits. Borrowing the franchise name, Hungama 2 promises to keep up the legacy, but does it live up to the expectations and the hype set by its predecessor? With Hungama 2, director Priyadarshan attempts to recreate his style which honestly looks like a plot rehash of several 90s movies combined. Following his archetype ‘comedy of errors‘ formula, the director tries to create situations that may have looked rib ticklingly funny on paper but not much, in execution.

Hungama 2 is essentially focused on Akash (Meezan Jaffery) who ends up in soup after his ex-lover Vaani (Pranitha Subhash) accuses him of abandoning her and their baby. Meanwhile, Akash is already sworn to marry a rich girl. Parallelly, we have a young Anjali (Shilpa Shetty) married to a middle-aged Radhe (Paresh Rawal). Naturally, Radhe is insecure and gets paranoid every time he is away. He even installs a camera at the entrance to keep a watch on his ‘hot’ wife. Of course, because this is Priyadarshan, all of this is coaxed in jest and dry humour.

Back to the story, the confusion started by Vaani slowly spirals into bigger misunderstandings and attempts to salvage the situations, which in turn forms the entire premise of Hungama 2. Priyadarshan has used every character, situation possible to extra humour but sadly, all the attempts were a big fail for me. Some jokes and dialogues are so passe that it doesn’t even derive a yawn anymore. Then, of course, we have the cliche climax scene of a man pretending to force himself on the girl to get her to admit her crime. I wonder if this can pass as comedy anymore? Haven’t we learnt better by now?

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Honestly, If I want to watch a 90s movie, I would just stream it, we don’t need a repackaged story in 2021. While at it, the makers have also used Chura Ke Dile Mera repackaged version, and the less I say about it the better.

Hungama 2 has all the ingredients and support of stalwarts in the field, but what it lacks is wit and smart writing. The screenplay doesn’t help either. The dialogues fall flat on the face and no, the actors are not to be blamed. Ashutosh Rana, Manoj Joshi, Johnny Lever, at the hem try their best to uplift the script but even the best of actors can only do that much.

What Hungama 2 really fails at is erupting series of laughter with the madness it promises, but it falls short of it, clearly.

Shilpa Shetty makes a comeback to movies after a long hiatus with the film. Although her performance is decent, there is only that much her character has to offer. There is no arch or individual personality to Anjali, and I wished she had more to do in the film. Meezan stands tall amid all the veteran and experienced actors. His hard work is notable and although, there were scenes where he could have done better, his attempt at comedy is not dismissible. I wished Pranitha as Vaani was slightly more spontaneous, there was something amiss.

In some good news, the film does make you smile once or twice amid all the chaos. But your jaws won’t hurt from laughing while watching the movie!

I would rather stream the 2003 Hungama once more, just to dive in nostagia.

Hungama 2 can be streamed on Disney + Hotstar.

Bhavna Agarwal

Assistant Editor at Bollywood Bubble. An ambivert who is currently high on K-dramas and K-Pop. A forever Bollywood fan, who continues to gush over solid stories and characters. Hit me up for a fine conversation over chai.

You can also reach me on – https://twitter.com/filmybugB