Tag Archives: Chunky Panday

Movie Review: Son of Sardaar 2 (2025)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Son of Sardaar 2 on Netflix

Hidden within Son of Sardaar 2‘s overstuffed story are some wonderfully executed performances — but, boy, do you have to sort through a lot of cruft to find them.

The sequel to 2012’s enjoyable Son of Sardaar finds naive nice guy Jassi Singh Randhawa (Ajay Devgn) waiting in Punjab for his British visa to come through so he can join his wife of 11 years, Dimple (Neeru Bajwa). When he finally gets it and reunites with her in Scotland, she immediately asks for a divorce.

Elsewhere in Scotland, a band of Pakistani-British musicians — Rabia (Mrunal Thakur), her step-daughter Saba (Roshni Walia), Mehwish (Kubbra Sait), and transgender woman Gul (Deepak Dobriyal) — is in trouble. Their leader Danish (Chunky Panday) — who is Rabia’s husband and Saba’s father — took off with a Russian woman, forcing Rabia to take charge of the group.

A chance encounter between Rabia and Jassi proves beneficial for both of them, even if she does stab him in the hand with a fork when they meet. Rabia gives Jassi a place to stay in exchange for pretending to be her husband and Saba’s dad. See, Saba wants to marry her rich boyfriend Gogi (Sahil Mehta), but his strict father Raja (Ravi Kishan) insists on meeting Saba’s family first. Not only does Jassi have to pretend to be Saba’s dad but a former soldier as well, while the rest of the women pretend to be Indian, Hindu, and definitely not musicians.

These are already a lot of characters to keep track of, and it gets worse when Gogi’s family is introduced. There’s his mom Premlata (Ashwini Kalsekar), his uncles Tony (the late Mukul Dev in his final role) and Titu (Vindu Dara Singh), and his white step-grandmother Kim (Emma Kate Vansittart). The step-grandmother’s backstory brings several other characters into the mix, and Sanjay Mishra shows up with a bunch of sidekicks as well. Heck, the movie even starts with Jassi dancing with Dimple and their four children, but that turns out to be a dream and they don’t actually have kids. There are too many people as-is without introducing imaginary ones.

New characters are dropped into the film following abrupt cuts, and it takes a while to figure out how they connect to the main story. Subplots sprawl and expand while previously introduced characters get less and less to do. The lack of focus forces the audience to keep track of threads and relationships when they should be allowed to sit back and laugh. Then again, there aren’t many standout bits, save one near the end involving Dimple.

Son of Sardaar 2 isn’t all bad, thanks to the actors. Devgn is still endearing as the innocent guy who stumbles into trouble. Thakur’s feisty energy pairs well opposite Devgn and keeps the story moving. Sait plays her musician character as charmingly caffeinated, and Kishan’s straitlaced performance as the strict dad defines the stakes for Jassi and crew.

The delightful surprise of the film is Dobriyal’s portrayal of Gul. Dobriyal is a tremendous actor with plenty of stellar work on his resume, but the fact that he brings such gravity and tenderness to a character in a rather silly comedy is impressive. Gul is the voice of reason and authority when things get too chaotic. I can’t speak to the authenticity of the way she’s written as a trans woman (there’s some dialogue about the man inside her versus the woman inside her that feels odd), but Dobriyal plays her respectfully. Her being trans fuels some jokes, but she is never the butt of the joke. Dobriyal won’t let her be.

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Movie Review: Vijay 69 (2024)

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2.5 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Vijay 69 on Netflix

Vijay 69 is a compact slice-of-life flick that’s funny and touching. The new Netflix Original movie created by Yash Raj Entertainment — the OTT arm of Yash Raj Films — fits perfectly on a streaming service.

Anupam Kher stars as the titular 69-year-old Vijay. A neighbor sees him jump into the ocean for a late night swim and assumes it’s a suicide attempt. Curmudgeonly Vijay turns up at church the next morning in the middle of his own funeral.

Even more upsetting to Vijay than being declared dead after only a few hours of fruitless searching is the eulogy his best friend Fali (Chunky Panday) wrote for him. The speech mentions that Vijay was good at rummy and once won a garba dance contest, but that’s about it.

Vijay is incensed that the eulogy didn’t mention the bronze medal he won in a national swimming competition, but that happened decades ago. When he sits down to write his own list of achievements, he can’t think of anything else. Though he has good friends, a caring daughter and grandson, and memories of his beloved wife Anna, he realizes he’s been running out the clock since she died from cancer fifteen years ago.

Inspiration for how to beef up his eulogy comes when an 18-year-old boy in his apartment colony starts training to become the youngest Indian to complete a triathlon. A quick internet search reveals that Vijay would beat the current record holder for oldest Indian triathlete by two years if he competed. Even though no one believes he can do it, Vijay vows to finish the triathlon.

The conflict in Vijay 69 is absurd in a good way. Vijay becomes rivals with the teenage athlete Aditya (Mihir Ahuja, who played Jughead in The Archies). Vijay trains under the eccentric Coach Kumar (Vrajesh Hirjee), who has local kids pelt Vijay with water balloons to make him run faster. As the old man swims laps, Coach shouts, “You’re a sea snake! You’re a sea otter! You’re an underwater mountain goat!”

Writer-director Akshay Roy (Meri Pyaari Bindu) clearly had fun with the dialogue in Vijay 69, making Vijay’s foul mouth a continual source of laughs. One can only imagine the challenge subtitler Neena Kiss faced trying to come up with English equivalents for Vijay’s colorful language.

Kher does a nice job humanizing Vijay, making him more than just a grumpy Gus. He’s vulnerable and openly shows gratitude for his friends. The unexpected alliance he eventually forms with Aditya is quite sweet.

Panday stops just short of making Fali into a caricature, allowing the affection his character feels for Vijay to shine through. Hirjee is delightful in a role I wished was bigger.

Vijay 69 suffers most when it tries to be a more conventional sports movie. Filmmaker Roy doesn’t trust the drama inherent in sport to carry the story, and instead relies on too many shots of characters struggling to increase dramatic tension. After the umpteenth closeup of Vijay looking like he’s going to have a heart attack while riding a bike, the emotional effectiveness wanes.

That said, the film’s sub-two-hour runtime keeps it from overstaying its welcome, even if it does become heavy-handed at the end. Vijay 69 is a nice story that’s small enough in scale to suit at-home viewing but worthy of one’s undivided attention.

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