Welcome Back

Nana Patekar, Naseeruddin Shah, Paresh Rawal, Anil Kapoor and Dimple Kapadia. Casting all these good actors in a shoddy and crap movie like welcome back is like buying all the expensive furniture and home appliances for a cheap cottage. If we had a dangling house in the climax of welcome in 2007, 8 years later Aneez Bazmee’s crazy thoughts creates a climax filled with exploding tiny helicopters and sand storm. With bizarre chain of events happening in a cluttered script filled with plastic characters, clocking at 153 minutes Welcome Back is not much short from being a torture.

Majnu Bhai and Uday Bhai are the central protagonists. Both of them are still single and desperate to mingle. “Coincidentally” both of them are attracted to a princess at the same time. During the love settlement debate, Uday’s father comes there and tells him that he has another sister and then the princess and her mother demands the bhais that their sister’s marriage should happen first. Thus in a way Welcome Back repeats the story of Welcome with only one main change. The groom this time is a goon.

The story happens mostly in Middle East and occasionally in India. But the amount of coincidences that happens in the movie is unbelievable. The story is best suited for any comedy stage shows as we are ready to laugh for anything merely funny. Anees Bazmee follows the step of Sajid Khan in many areas to create humor. Slapstick goes to a level where you will feel the pain of a slap because of the imagination that is absolutely ridiculous. Crows, helicopters, sandstorm, bullets and Shiney Ahuja was there without any particular reason.

I won’t say Anil Kapoor and Nana Patekar did their parts badly. Bazmee got what he wanted from the two veterans. Honestly, the only laughable moments were given to us by the two along with Paresh Rawal. It was good to see Paresh Rawal after a small gap. Seeing Naseeruddin Shah in such a role was somewhat a devastating experience. No offence, but John Abraham was a miscast. The guy shivers while getting angry and his Ajju Bhai accent sounds artificial. Shruti Haasan doesn’t have much to do except for some overdramatic talks. Dimple Kapadia was okay and Ankita Shrivastava is the show piece of Welcome Back with her revealing fashion.

As I said, Anees Bazmee follows his usual way of making sloppy comedy. The audience who has experienced “Housefull”s, Himmatwala, Humshakals, Its Entertainment and Bazmee’s own Welcome may find this movie in the similar zone. Screenplay is a void imagination to use too much money to create too much slapstick comedy in every frame. The dialogues towards the climax fight had some hilarious content in it. Cinematography is poor and the Visual Effects were shoddy. Music department has no catchy tunes and the placement of songs was also wayward.

On the whole, Welcome Back is as shoddy as its previous segment. If you have liked Welcome, you will like this one too. The rating is 1.5/5 for this lengthy torture from Anees Bazmee and company.