Fukrey has grown a conscience and lost quite a bit of its comedic charm. Don't get me wrong. The third film in the slacker comedy franchise still retains some elements that made it a breakout hilarious watch when the first outing was released exactly a decade ago. But in its endeavour to keep cashing in on the antics of Hunny, Choocha and Co., the makers of Fukrey are now veering dangerously close to flogging a dead horse.
When we first met this pack of good-for-nothing boys aka 'fukras', they were still in school and their (mis)adventures, though limited to the East Delhi milieu, felt instantly relatable and also brought on ready guffaws. The soulful Ambarsariya, rendered soulfully by Sona Mohapatra, still remains the best thing about that film.
The second film, released six years ago, saw the boys, still down on their luck, but not lacking when pulling out all the stops in turning around their misfortunes. Despite a few misfires, there has always been an inherent, often innocent charm and unique comedic energy about the Fukrey films which has consistently found a ready audience.
Fukrey 3, however, engages only in patches. It revels in its trademark 'deja chu' and is far more ambitious when it comes to its storytelling than its first two editions, with director Mrighdeep Singh Lamba and writer Vipul Vig, trying to rise above traditional tomfoolery and bringing in both politics and science (yes, you read that right!) into the mix. They should have just let Fukrey be the crackpot comedy with the stoner vibe that it always has been.
The star of the show is, of course, Choocha (Varun Sharma) who gets the author-backed part and the (relatively) best lines. Choocha, the endearing man-child, is still enamoured by the shrewd gangster Bholi Punjaban (Richa Chadha). Bholi, in a natural career trajectory for most crooks, is fighting the upcoming election, with Choocha, in a strange twist of fate, being pitted as her rival. But those who know Choocha know that he can be anything but formidable, and very soon, Hunny (Pulkit Samrat), Choocha, Laali (Manjot Singh) and their mentor Panditji (Pankaj Tripathi, whose deadpan humour often saves the day) are tricked by Bholi to head to South Africa in search of gold.
Till this point, the laughs are rare — except for that super fun sequence in the plane where a curious Choocha is told by the flight stewardess that human waste on the flight is converted into ice just as Pandit is about to take a swig of his ice-cold drink — and Fukrey 3 remains within the limits of coherence. Once in South Africa, Choocha and Co. realise they have been duped — but not before a Hindi-speaking Black girl called Mombasa, whom Choocha refers to as Mombati, Mogambo and Mausambi (okay, I laughed out loud at that one) gives her heart away to him.
In their bid to run away and get back home to India, a strange turn of events (depends on whether you find it funny or freakish), makes the four realise that when Hunny's sweat is mixed with Choocha's urine, it gives rise to hydrocarbons. That not only provides the quartet with the idea to 'manufacture' their own fuel and sell it at dirt-cheap rates, but it also sets into motion a string of jokes set around pee, perspiration and other bodily secretions. A lot of it stinks.
Add to that is the film's ambition to talk about Delhi's increasing water shortage, with conversations peppered with 'Day Zero' creeping into the narrative. While it is well-intentioned, it is definitely not well-executed, and that makes Fukrey 3 lose much of its DNA. We are left with a film that is neither a bonafide comedy nor a serious look at an issue as pressing as the water crisis.
A cameo of a character from the first two films and an airline dump end Fukrey 3 with the possibility of another film. 1,2,3... more toilet humour loading!
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