Heropanti 2 movie review: Tiger Shroff, Ahmed Khan's new film makes Baaghi 2 look like a modern classic

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Language: Hindi

I can pin-point the exact moment I gave up on Ahmed Khan’s Heropanti 2. As most of you would like to believe, it was not before the film even began.

Tiger Shroff has made enough of a dent on Hindi films to teach us what to expect from his movies: a series of airborne sequences sprinkled with songs elaborately choreographed, a pleasant-on-the-eyes leading lady, a campy villain, and LOTS of henchmen, to showcase Shroff’s mastery in various kinds of martial arts.

And while the first half amused and annoyed me with Shroff’s par-for-the-course act as a rubber band who knows how to breathe, it was in the second half when an AR Rahman Sufi devotional song began to play at a shrine, and Shroff began clenching his jaws trying to feign spirituality, is when I drew the line. Enough was enough.  

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According to logic employed in the Tiger Shroff Cinematic Universe: Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Tara Sutaria could be siblings, Tiger Shroff could pass off as a world-renowned hacker, a set-piece inside a parking lot full of Lamborghinis is not far-fetched, and yet misemploying an AR Rahman Sufi devotional track to indicate the change-of-heart of Shroff’s character over the course of a song is simply too much. Especially, given how Shroff’s face is like the cardboard cut-out of an earnest school kid begging for a round of applause. It probably fits that Rahman is also having lacklustre outing on this one.

Heropanti 2 is a hell of a hastily put together cut-paste job.

In the introduction of Siddiqui’s Laila, an effeminate gangster who seems to be relishing their non-binary attire, there seems to be a mismatch between the dialogue and Siddiqui’s lip-movement. “Botched dub,” I noted in my phone, only to quickly delete the point. After all, this is a minor “technical detail” in a film where the audience has come to watch Tiger Shroff perform aerial acrobatics for 144 mins.

The problem with Heropanti 2 is not that it belongs to the genre called Tiger Shroff; the problem is that it is more scattered, illogical, and lazy than Shroff’s earlier films. It makes _Baaghi 2_ – a terrible film that co-opts nationalism in the worst manner possible – look like a modern classic. Because however bad Baaghi 2 might have been, at least it gave a damn about continuity.

On the other hand, Heropanti 2 begins and ends flashbacks at the filmmakers’ whim. There is no such thing as subtly dumping information for the viewers, according to Sajid Nadiadwala (producer, and credited for the story) and Rajat Arora (dialogues + screenplay). Each time Shroff’s Babloo Ranawat needs to explain his motivation, we cut to flashback. Nearly half a dozen. At one point, it was almost like I was struggling to keep up whether the film was playing in the present or in the flashback, because all characters look exactly the same in both.

My mind began to wander, and I started thinking of the many levels of dreams in Inception. Was this happening? Was I imagining a bad Tiger Shroff film, or was I actually eagerly waiting for a flashback to conclude, so that the actual film would conclude?

A word for the slender ladies in Shroff’s films: Disha Patani, Shraddha Kapoor, Kriti Sanon, Kiara Advani, and Tara Sutaria, who choose to suffer the humiliation of a ‘role’ like this. In Heropanti 2, Sutaria’s character sexually harasses Shroff (her employee), which is played up for laughs. And there are multiple scenes, where all she has to do is stand beside Shroff or Siddiqui, and say, “I can’t believe I didn’t know all this."

Siddiqui, who earlier made a meal of hammy characters in larger-than-life projects (Think Kick), appears bored from the get-go. The non-binary costumes and the effeminate mannerism only remain a gimmick in the end, instead of translating into a flesh-and-blood character. For some reason, the film also has Amrita Singh playing (surprise! surprise!) an over-the-top Punjabi mother, who slaps the villain’s henchmen ‘out of love,’ and does not blink before booking plane tickets to Varanasi so she can pray for her son’s well-being.

At several points, Heropanti 2 seems like the work of someone suffering from Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (or someone waiting to be diagnosed). It starts off many plot-threads without bothering to complete them before chaotically jumping onto the next thing. Sutaria’s Inaaya is introduced as a “gaming princess,” who lives life at “100 Mbps” only for the rest of the movie to not mention her gaming empire at all. Amrita Singh’s wish to start an ambulance service for the less privileged, something Shroff’s character vows to restart, is unsurprisingly forgotten by the end of the film.

Heropanti 2 belongs to the taken-for-granted school of filmmaking, where a character (Zakir Hussain) addresses a United Nations meeting with “Gentlemen!,” even though there are two ladies seated at the table, right in front of him. But this is a relatively small, inane slip-up in a film that tries to convince us that Tiger Shroff knows how to code in Python. By the end, Heropanti 2 is sure to beat you into submission. All that muscle to pulverise your own faith in logic and coherence.

Heropanti 2 is playing in cinemas.

Rating: 0

Tatsam Mukherjee has been working as a film journalist since 2016. He is based out of Delhi NCR.

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