When the first Dabangg came, even though I wasn’t a huge fan of that movie, on the whole, I really enjoyed watching Salman Khan playing this irreverent cop Chulbul Pandey. The second part was a forgettable attempt to cash in on the likability of the character and when it comes to the third part the joke is on us. Co-written and co-produced by Salman Khan, Dabangg 3 directed by Prabhu Deva insults its viewers with its mediocrity. Prabhu Deva, who is a master at making these kinds of films, gets the green signal from Salman Khan to do his thing without the need for a script and the end result was catastrophic.
This time the movie is an origin story. During the course of one particular investigation, Chulbul Pandey locks horns with his old rival Bali Singh who was responsible for the death of his first love Khushi. Bali, on the other hand, has a lot of anger management issues (a usual thing in a Prabhu Deva movie) and thus the fight was on between the two. What will happen in the end is clear to everyone and waiting for that to happen for an excruciating 154 minutes is Dabangg 3.
In the second half of the movie, Sonakshi Sinha’s Rajjo gets injured in a bomb blast and we are shown a one second tacky CGI footage of Rajjo flying as she was so close to the explosion. Cut to the hospital scene where we see Pandey coming to visit her and we see a Rajjo who has no injuries on her face and her hair is perfectly smooth and straight. It’s a bomb blast Mr. Prabhudeva. Forget our intelligence, give some respect to your own brain no? And if that wasn’t enough for you, then the movie suddenly goes to a song number where Pandey Ji is trying to cheer up his wife. I can’t really remember which song it was as almost all of them popped without any need making even the craziest Salman Khan fan in the audience go “Arrey Yaar!”.
“Mangalasheele, rasavisthruthikk angam muzhuvan thunakku venda”, that quote from Natyashasthra will be my feedback to what Salman Khan has done in this movie in the name of acting. The face he makes while being emotional reminded me of the face my friend made when he wanted to puke. And please don’t make him dance too much. Sonakshi Sinha’s Rajjo gets reduced to a mere tool to endorse voyeurism. Saiee Manjrekar is playing a very poorly written character and I hope she will get some role in the future that will help her show her acting chops rather than the sweet smile. Kichcha Sudeep as the psycho villain is perhaps the only person who is trying to act in this entire movie, but sadly we don’t get to see too much of him. Arbaaz Khan reprises his role as Makhanchand Pandey and is totally unfunny.
In one scene, the movie suddenly goes to a comedy track between a minister’s brother in law and a pimp with the “Tofa Tofa Laya Laya” track in the background. I am pretty sure it was an unscripted improvised thing that had absolutely no relevance in the movie. They have applied this logic of randomly creating scenes that can range from being excessively melodramatic, superficially women empowering to unbearably comical and including them at wherever they want with zero regards about the emotional arch of the story. Salman Khan is aware of what all things are happening in the society and there is a deliberate and lame effort to project Chulbul Pandey as some kind of a savior of women and their rights. Well, all I can say about that is that it was “cute” (Kids these days have a better understanding). Screenplay c- written by Salman himself is just a collection of scenes and songs that will only focus on the hero. The purpose of the camera in this movie is to cover almost the full movie at a high frame rate.
Race 3 producer Ramesh Taurani once said in an interview that Salman Khan wanted some sort of family value thing in Race 3. Yeah! Family value in a franchise whose only quality was double-crossing characters and we know how it ended up. Similar to that Salman Khan is trying to sanitize his badass Chulbul Pandey avatar too. A superstar showing his arrogance by taking his audience for granted: that’s Dabangg 3.
A superstar showing his arrogance by taking his audience for granted: that’s Dabangg 3.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
