In Fukrey 3, all roads lead to the restroom. The mention of faeces is the last resort of the uninspired comedy writer. I lost count of the number of times anything to do with body waste was referenced for the sake of cheap laughs. We have Choocha (Varun Sharma) washing up a child’s behind, drinking water from a commode, waiting to defecate a diamond and being concerned about poop falling on heads when one takes a dump on a flying plane.
There is also a mention of a spice box being kept in the toilet (Why?). That’s not all. After absurdist dreams and “deja chu”, this time, Honey’s (Pulkit Samrat) and Choocha’s sweat and urine, when mixed, create petrol. Don’t bother to read it again. If somebody kidnapped me, tied my hands and asked me to narrate the plotline of Fukrey 3 at gunpoint, firstly I would feel sorry for the kidnapper.
Secondly, I would ask them to untie one hand so that I can facepalm myself as I try to join a series of traumatic events into a coherent plotline. After the forgettable events of Fukrey 2, the fukras, Honey, Choocha, Laali (Manjot Singh) and Pandit Ji (Pankaj Tripathi) are struggling with running an electronics store. After being a pimp and running an organ trafficking business, the next logical step for Bholi Punjaban (Richa Chadha) is to join politics.
She is trying to be elected the Jal Sansadhan Mantri (water affairs minister) and calls up the idlers for campaign management. In the process—and something you don’t blink twice at when in Fukraworld— Choocha becomes the public’s favourite. The fukras then decide to pit Choocha against Bholi in the polls. A man-child, with a penchant for T-shirts printed with Kim Jong Un’s face, who campaigns atop a tank. We have a clear winner.
After a forgettable detour to South Africa, where the slackers were called to use Choocha’s ‘Deja Chu’ capabilities and find diamonds (don’t ask), the film returns to Delhi. Apart from Bholi, the fukras now also have to fight the water mafia, save the capital from Day Zero and in the process, not sweat in a knight armour or pee while standing barefoot on an ice slab.
If that sounds like a hodgepodge of senseless imagery, it is. The 2013 Fukrey had some honesty to it. It seemed like it came from a mind that had observed the absurdity of day-to-day life. A morning office-goer who always replies amusingly off-topic whenever he is asked something (“Did you see who stole my milk can?”, “No, I don’t drink milk”), a streetside vagabond who keeps harping about how rich he is (it turns out his torn pockets are actually filled with bundles of cash).
It was also one-track, contained. Honey and Choocha need money to get into college, and so does Laali. If you forgive the umpteen scenes of men sucking poison out of snakebitten butts, Fukrey Returns (2017) was an understandable milking-the-cash-cow sequel. But Fukrey 3 seems like flogging a dead horse. Somewhere, there is a desperate attempt at being a political satire. Of how the greed for oil will suck the world dry of water. But all that is lost in a circular flush of the commode.
FUKREY 3
CAST: Richa Chadha, Pankaj Tripathi, Pulkit Samrat, Manjot Singh, Varun Sharma
DIRECTOR: Mrighdeep Singh Lamba
Rating: 1.5/5