Movie Review: Carry on Jatta is a family entertainer

Cast: Gippy Grewal, Mahie Gill, Jaswinder Bhalla, Gurpreet Ghuggi, Khushboo Grewal, Binnu Dhillon, Kanwaljit Singh, Sunita Dheer, Neena Cheema, Jaggi Singh, Rana Ranbir and B.N. Sharma

Director: Smeep Kang

Rating: ***1/2

Carry on Jatta is about a bunch of misfits whose misconception about each other’s backgrounds end up in a series of chaotic, yet comic outcomes. It is an out an out comedy of marital mixups.

Advocate Raminder Bajwa (Jaswinder Bhalla) stays with his two sons Goldie (Binnu Dhillon) and Sunny (Gippy Grewal). The family is shown owning a huge house and constantly looking for a tenant for their 1st floor. Advocate Bajwa is a widower and is constantly getting into verbal spats with his elder son, Goldie. These spats turn out to be be quite comical.

While Goldie is married to Preeti (Khushboo Grewal) and assists his dad in his practice, Sunny runs a brick kiln business. Rocky (Gurpreet Ghuggi) is Sunny’s good friend and good for nothing son of Police Inspector Sikander Tiwana (B.N.Sharma). Rocky’s only aim in life is to get married to a rich girl, Nikki (Sunita Dheer), daughter of Satwinder Dosanjh (Kanwaljit Singh).

Dosanjh's son (Rana Ranbir) is always seen pestering his father to send him to Canada. And Sunny is smitten by Mahie (Mahie Gill) who he meets at his friend's sister's wedding. Sunny is constantly chasing Mahie and overhears the converstaion of Mahie with her friends where she mentions about marrying someone who doesn't have a family.

To win over Mahie, Sunny indulges in a conversation with Rocky to prove to Mahie that he is an orphan. Even though he wins over Mahie and it results in a love story which takes an interesting turn when he is forced to marry her in court on the insistence of Mahie and her brother.

When Sunny leaves for work, Mahie goes out to look for a rented accommodation and ends up selecting Bajwa's house. When she informs Sunny about her selection, Sunny is flummoxed and he tries to make her walk out of the deal.

When he fails to convince Mahie, he presents his friend Rocky as the husband of Mahie to his family. They connive to use every tactic so that his family may not agree to housing the couple. This results in Bajwa giving them one month notice. So Sunny is forced to live in his own house as a tenant.

Even Rocky has to move in the house as Mahie's husband. Sunny and Rocky trade places very convincingly which result in very hilarious situations. To add insult to injury, Rocky convinces Sunny to show his father, Advocate Bajwa as Rocky's father, without their knowledge, as his Inspector father refuses to meet Nikki's parents as Rocky is good for nothing.

However, the twists and turns results in Rocky convincing Nikki to marry her in court. To make things more complicated, he tells Bajwa that his son has married Nikki. The family of Bajwa accepts Nikki as their daughter-in-law. There is total bedlam as the guys keep hiding their wives and family from each other till the climax.

This results in utter confusion and amazing comic situataions. The drama ends after a huge chase popularised in the vintage "Carry On" movies. The film ends on a high note after a 22 minutes long climax.

The high point of the movie is its crisp hilarious dialogues by Narinder Kathuria who quit Comedy Circus to pen very entertaining dialogues.

Some songs of the movie songs could have been avoided which were carried since Gippy Grewal is more popular for his singing than acting. This resulted in the first half beinga little drab but the second half more than makes for it.

Though the lead pair was good, the movie was carried on their shoulders by Jaswinder Bhalla, B.N. Sharma and Binu Dhillon. Binu's timing and dialogue delivery was very good and Bhalla is a seasoned actor and comedian. Rana Ranbir was a misfit and Ghuggi's performance was not brilliant especially in the drunkards scene. The lead pair looked good though Mahie was under utilised and her dancing left much to be desired.

All respect for the director, Smeep Kang of "Chak De Phatte" fame for presenting Punjabi humour without any vulgarity. This movie must be watched as it is a family entertainer and out and out comedy. The producer in Gippy Grewal's brother, Sippy and their co-producers will laugh all the away to the bank.