Wild Wild Punjab: A Buddy Comedy That Falls Flat
As I sat down to watch Wild Wild Punjab, I was expecting a hilarious buddy comedy that would leave me in stitches. Unfortunately, the Netflix film starring Varun Sharma, Sunny Singh, and others is a blur of ham-fisted hi-jinks and inane humor.
A colorful Punjabi wedding
The film’s story follows Khanna (Sharma), a young man reeling from a breakup, and his friends Maan (Sunny Singh), Gaurav (Jassie Gill), and Honey (Manjot Singh) as they embark on a road trip across Punjab to help him get over his ex. Along the way, they get into all sorts of misadventures, from gatecrashing a wedding to dealing with trigger-happy buffoons.
A road trip across Punjab
However, the writers, Sandeep Jain and Harman Wadala, traffic in the lowest of cultural stereotypes. The Punjabis in Wild Wild Punjab come across as boisterous revelers who siphon alcohol from barrels and have a finicky attachment to their wheels. The film’s portrayal of serious issues like drug abuse, suicide, and illegal emigration is puerile and simplistic.
A colorful representation of Punjabi culture
The film’s humor is also problematic, with lines like “I’ll slap her…I don’t discriminate between boy and girl” and everyone referring to Khanna’s ex as ‘veshya’ (real name: Vaishali). It’s an act of heroic restraint, really, that Pulkit Samrat and Ali Fazal from the Fukrey franchise do not make cameos in this film.
A nod to the Fukrey franchise
Varun Sharma, slurry and shit-faced through most of the runtime, taking a belated bullet in his rear end, is barely distinguishable from any of his past roles. Sunny Singh looks more relaxed than he did in Adipurush, having traded the bows and arrows for a buzzcut and piercings.
Varun Sharma in a memorable scene
For a buddy comedy, the film never convincingly establishes the dynamics of the group. “There’s a difference between a Sufi and a gold digger,” Maan declares vis-a-vis Vaishali, yet we also learn that he mooches off his best friends.
A buddy comedy that falls flat
Wild Wild Punjab runs low on horsepower and horseplay. Debutant director Simarpreet Singh struggles to choreograph the levels of comedic chaos he clearly aspires to: a chase involving a psychedelic truck, an SUV, a scooter, and a police van fizzles out without punch.
A chaotic chase scene
Near the climax, a bottle of illegal pills is unloaded into chicken feed, yet nothing comes of this promising setup. This isn’t a Hangover movie, we’re told, which struck me as less a quip than a frank admission of defeat.
A nod to The Hangover
In conclusion, Wild Wild Punjab is a buddy comedy that falls flat. Despite its promising premise, the film’s humor is puerile, and its portrayal of Punjabi culture is simplistic and stereotypical. If you’re looking for a good laugh, you might want to look elsewhere.
A majestic representation of Punjab
