Over a decade after Jatt & Juliet and its sequel became the highest-grossing films in the history of Punjabi cinema and, along with 2012's Carry on Jatta, rescued a movie industry from years of dormancy, the third film in the franchise, powered by Diljit Dosanjh's high-wattage charisma and his proven chemistry with Neeru Bajwa, has the potential to set a few records of its own.
The two lead actors are eleven years older although the two characters that they play are not as old as they are in real life. But Dosanjh and Bajwa turn the clock back without letting the strain show. The former is a much bigger star than he was when the first two Jatt & Juliet films came out. Bajwa, too, has strengthened her standing in the industry. Together, and individually, they hit the right notes.
Continuity, varnished vigour give Jatt & Juliet 3 a distinct edge over what has gone before. The directorial baton has been passed on to Jagdeep Sidhu, who is also the writer of the film. His handiwork hits its straps in a manner that would suggest that it was just waiting to get off the blocks.
The unapologetically middle-brow and easy-flowing romantic comedy ticks all the boxes but trips just a touch in trying to articulate a surfeit of messages about gender equality, social harmony and other issues of contemporary relevance. More on that later.
Diljit Dosanjh, as himself, kicks off the film in style with a peppy number that is funneled into a scene in which the character of Fateh Singh - the name is the same but the man is not - is woken up by his mother. He is a new Punjab Police recruit.
When Fateh reaches the police station on his first day at work, he discovers that his immediate boss is Senior Constable Pooja Singh (Neeru Bajwa). The stage is set for a love affair that has funny overtones until their personal relationship faces the danger of running aground owing to the lies that have told and the misleading claims that have made.
Police work takes a backseat as Fateh and Pooja, each with a different reason, plan to hook up and marry. Their desperation to impress each other yields a series of mirthful situations riding on a mix of misadventures that threaten to boomerang on them.
In Bristol on an assignment to apprehend Daisy (Jasmin Bajwa), a girl accused of defrauding a prospective groom in Punjab and running away to the UK, Fateh and Pooja run into a self-erected wall of misunderstandings.
Having had it rough as a boy growing up in poverty, Fateh swears by the power of money to change lives. He asserts that isn't averse to accepting bribes. But Pooja is a stickler for honesty. Dirty money isn't her cup of tea. But that, as things transpire, is only one point of disagreement between the two.
In the decade and a bit that has elapsed since Jatt & Juliet 2, Diljit Dosanjh's career has been propelled into the stratosphere across several domains of cinema and music. His enormous star power is what Jatt & Juliet 3 banks upon to the hilt.
Replete with rat-a-rat verbal exchanges, one-liners that flow without a hindrance and punchlines that hit their mark for the most part, Jatt & Juliet 3 is the sort of mass entertainer that does not need to take recourse to cheap devices to inveigle the audience.
It tells a story of love and its pitfalls but stays firmly within its self-imposed chaste parameters. Like its precursors, the film, keeping its committed family audiences in mind, gets by without scenes of physical intimacy or suggestive dialogues.
The formula created in the Anurag Singh-directed, Dheeraj Rattan-scripted films is still very much in place although Jatt & Juliet 3 moves further afield in search of thematic variety and novelty. It succeeds to a significant extent.
The film gallops from one thing to another in quick succession but manages not to dilute its focus on the adventures of the lovable Fateh Singh and his knockabouts with Pooja. Needless, the film is at its best when it sticks to the latter vein.
In Bristol, Fateh discovers two cafes that stand side by side but are separated by a yawning gap engendered by a competition for customers that pits a young Daisy against a pair of avuncular men (Nasir Chinyoti and Akram Udas).
One of the cafes is called Lehnda Punjab, the other is Chahda Punjab. Fateh takes sides and strikes up a partnership with one of them but without letting his sense of solidarity with immigrants from the subcontinent.
On a more flippant note, Jatt & Juliet 3 also has Shampy (Rana Ranbir) and his dad (B.N. Sharma) for the purpose of adding comic interludes to the proceedings. While the two actors are undoubtedly as funny as ever, their antics appear somewhat laboured at times.
But there is nothing more laboured in Jatt & Juliet 3 as its protracted and circuitous climax that has Fateh running from one event to another to right a wrong that he has unknowingly committed to his own detriment.
Jagdeep Sidhu's script makes space for allusions, if only edgewise, to urgent issues pertaining to Punjab's brushes with social and political adversity and to the exodus of its youth to foreign lands in quest of greener pastures.
More specifically, Jatt & Juliet 3 touches upon the theme of a woman's place in a marriage and in the workplace. All of it is delivered with dollops of humour. As for anything else in the film that might seem to fall short, Diljit Dosanjh steps into the breach and leavens it with his charm.
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Diljit Dosanjh, Neeru Bajwa and Jasmin Bajwa
