Arjun Patiala | A ‘spoof’ that falls flat

Johnson Thomas

Arjun Patiala’s opening gambit is that it’s funny and that’s only because Pankaj Tripathi makes his monumental talent and presence felt by playing a producer reluctant to listen to a script reading. 

Going forward, you wouldn’t blame him for that though. The script that gets read is about an alcohol guzzling lay about Arjun Patiala (Diljit Dosanjh) who garners a job in the Punjab Police by way of sports quota and then manages to get rid of lawlessness in Ferozepur district through ingenious enterprising ways. At least that’s what the clueless director reciting the script thinks. Aiming to lend send-up frivolity to that far-fetched adventurism is Varun Sharma playing Onidda, Patiala’s sidekick, a constable whose tryst with serial heartbreak leads him to choose a buffalo as his lady love – but the accompanied comedy fails to rack up the laughs and Kriti Sanon’s air-headed turn as an investigative journalist is more than likely to make you snigger with incredulity. 

The other characters inhabiting this formulaic attempt at goofball comedy include an unscrupulous MLA Prapti Makkad (Seema Pahwa), a gullible goon, Sakool (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub), an IPS officer Gill (Ronit Roy), and a host of other peculiar characters. None of them are credible enough to leave an impact though. The narrative treatment is so inept and disengaging that even movements that might have been mined for greater hilarity by a more accomplished director, seem rather flaccid. Given the poor quality of scripts that get developed into films, it’s probably high time Bollywood scriptwriters indulge in rewrites rather than send-up first drafts that feel all too lame!