Junga

Junga from Gokul is a pretty weird mix in my opinion. It is ultimately a spoof on the Don genre films. And some of the scenes are ridiculously entertaining. But when you look at the totality of things and try to get it into the idea of being a film, Junga is excessively bloated and the spoofing kind of goes out of proportion making it a sporadic entertainer.

So our hero Junga is actually from a family of Dons and he realizes that truth only at the age of 32. He also realizes the fact that the family used to own a theatre complex which is now owned by a Chettiyar. Junga’s efforts to get the theatre back by doing the typical Don stuff is the story of this movie.

It is a bit difficult to judge these spoof sarcasm movies, especially about the plot as it is not supposed to be taken seriously. If they decide to release the conversational bits in Junga as separate YouTube videos, the number of hits and likes will be enormous. There is a sequence where Saranya Ponvannan who plays the role of Junga’s mother explains how the expense of maintaining the entourage of cliché Tamil villain setup ruined the family fortune. That along with numerous other moments in the movie where our hero Junga becomes that economy class miser Don offers to laugh out loud moments. Where Gokul misses the mark is in incorporating all this into an engaging enough story.

There are bad Vijay Sethupathi movies but never a bad Vijay Sethupathi performance. Here also that saying holds true. He is in tremendous form and plays the desi Don in a hilarious way with swagger. Yogi Babu as the friend was also brilliant in keeping up with Vijay Sethupathi. Saranya Ponvannan delivers a stand out performance as the mother. Sayyesha gets to show her dancing skills and waxed legs (routine glamour heroine). Madonna Sebastian is there in a pointless extended cameo kind of a role.

Gokul is known to make these quirky comedies and his last film was Karthi’s Kashmora. The director has a sense of humor when it comes to writing dialogues. But I find him constantly in a clueless area when it comes to crafting a scene or even constructing a story. Junga is not a Tamizhpadam to spoof without being less careful about the story. Both movies, Junga and Tamizhpadam 2 have the common mistake of extending the plot pointlessly for the sake of comedy. But Tamizhpadam by default had the liberty to do that but Junga wasn’t really in the space to do that and that backfires. The cinematography is okay and they have put a lot of effort in making those abroad stunts look authentic even though the situations created are silly. Music isn’t really a catchy one but the background score stays in your head.

Junga wasn’t a torturous experience for me as I kind of expected the spoof hearing the “Annanakku Kaale Call Taxi Da” dialogue. It has a lot of hilarious black humor mocking the cinematic Don concepts. You will laugh at all that. But the story isn’t compelling at all to make you give a narration about the movie to someone after watching it.

Rating: 2.5/5