Fukrey 3 (2023) :
Movie Review -
After back-to-back successful Fukrey movies, Mrighdeep Singh Lamba brings the third one with the same cast (minus one or two, as per your convenience). Bollywood has this bad habit of making sequels just to make money. A film is a hit; they want to make a franchise; they want to make a sequel, even if it's by chance. They don't care about the product's standard at all, and that also depends on how much money the film makes. Even they are not wrong from a business point of view because it's the public who decides the verdict. They will keep making craps until people keep coming to cinemas to watch them. That's a natural process in the industry. Anyways, I had to do my job as a movie critic, just as the team did by making a movie, and audiences will do so by deciding the fate of the movie. Fukrey 1 was a decent entertainer; then it turned into a forced mediocre comedy with Fukrey Returns, and now the mediocre franchise has become cheap with Fukrey 3.
There is no story in Fukrey 3, but let's just talk about whatever is there in brief. Right after a 4-5 minute long boring recap, the film starts with Choocha (Varun Sharma), Hunny (Pulkit Samrat), Lali (Manjot Singh), and Panditji (Pankaj Tripathi) trying to make their living out of a flop electronic shop. Bholi Punjaban (Richa Chadha) is campaigning for the elections, and she calls for the Fukreys' support. During her election campaign, Choocha becomes more popular than Bholi, and Hunny cooks up the idea of making Choocha an MLA and then a minister. Knowing that Choocha would be a threat to her political career, the smart Punjaban plans to send the four fukreys to Africa to find a diamond through their famous "Deja Choo" process. In Africa, the gang learns about Bholi's plans and is set to run back to India, but just before that, God's magic strikes upon them. Choocha and Hunny can now create a hydrocarbon liquid, aka petrol, together, which will make them millionaires. But are things that simple for them against Bholi Punjaban and a new male antagonist? Catch all the fun in the movie.
Vipul Vig has written one of the worst and most illogical scripts for a comedy in recent times. Fukrey 3 doesn't make any sense, and that's alright too, but it forces you to scratch your head and eat your teeth at least a dozen times in the long runtime of approx. 145 minutes. If that's not enough, then you have a terrible screenplay to torture you to death. I can understand the current air that we are not making good/decent comedies nowadays, but this is damn critical. Moreover, it has become so cheap that if I have to review and slam all the scenes here, then I think Google will remove my review due to offensive language. Why didn't they burn this trashy script with that urinated petrol while filming it? Fukrey 3 is an exhausting watch, with several moments testing your patience. A simple visit can turn into a political movement; a group can easily smuggle a diamond all the way from Africa; a reporter can easily jump into a politician's vehicle and ask the question and even set up a debate; a school principal can only scratch his head looking at his students blabbering anything about the school in front of other students; a mobile video can create a hysteria across the town, but the same people couldn't find the whereabouts of the same person for days; and how all of sudden a petrol deal can create a zero-day situation, as if all the ministers are on holidays. That marriage sequence was so terrible, almost at a B-grade level. I can just go on like this and end up writing a better script than Fukrey 3, just by bashing. Where was the laugh, by the way? Calling it a good comedy would make me laugh, though.
Fukrey 3 isn't a performance-oriented movie, so I am not quite sure how to review the performance when actors were not acting and just trying to rehearse for a spoof. Pulkit Samrat is probably the most sensible character, and with good looks and physics, he is pretty watchable. Varun Sharma is more of a child stand-up comedian than a mature actor as far as Fukrey 3 is concerned. His accent is getting worse day by day, I tell you, and if he doesn't stop it soon, then it's game over. Richa Chadha looked hot and dashing in Fukrey (2013), but it's not the same anymore. We all know actresses' glamour has a shorter lifespan on the screen, and it's been 10 years since that attractive Bholi Punjaban. The makers didn't know, I guess. Pankaj Tripathi in 2013, and Pankaj Tripathi in 2023-a lot has changed, and for good. Pankaj sir has done a decent job, which is below par for his standards, but unfortunately he's got some horrible dialogues. Manjot Singh is getting typecast, I feel. But it isn't a problem as long as he isn't going to lose his temperament. The supporting cast is nothing short of jokers from a vanished circuit, but even after that, some of them end up giving better expressions than the main cast members.
Fukrey and Fukrey Returns had good music, and we all hum those songs even today. Forget humming; can we find a single good song in F3? The answer is a big NO. The lyrics and background score are disappointing too. The cinematography is pretty okay, while the editing is at an all-time low for the franchise. If you don't have a good script to make a good film, then why waste the audience's time? Better wrap the trash soon and let us go home sooner. Mrighdeep Singh Lamba must have had a nightmare after reading F3's script. I think he never got over that. Such a big mess, and how carelessly has it been presented? Only someone who is still under the shock of a nightmare could have done that. What annoys you more is the below-the-belt treatment of the characters. Every single character and every single conflict has the same issue: it either wants to be dead or vulgarly funny. Believe me, it doesn't work in either case; rather, it frustrates you in both cases. There is a lot to say, but why waste good words on a bad product? To wrap it up in one line, Fukrey 3 is a Choo (cha) entertainer-IYKWIM. If they can use cheap words under the pretence of a comedy, why can't reviewers use the same against them?
RATING - 4/10*
