Star Cast: Varun Dhawan, Abhishek Banerjee, Paalin Kabaak, Deepak Dobriyal, Kriti Sanon, Saurabh Shukla
Director: Amar Kaushik
The story starts with Sharad Kelkar’s character narrating the horrifying tale of Bhediya to his daughter, in a way teasing what’s coming next. Bhaskar is a Delhi boy who gets a contract to develop a roadway system in Arunachal Pradesh in North East India, which he as execute by destroying the natural forest cover of that region.
A pre-functionary thread of North East bias treatment and the boy Bhaskar lands in Ziro with his cousin Janardan ( also, read Janna from Stree), a hilarious poker faced (Abhishek Banerjee), and meets his local friend Jobin (Paalin Kabaak).
With the help of Jobin & a local in Panda Ji (a brilliant Deepak Dobriyal), Bhaskar tries to convince locals to let him cut the forest. But, there is a wolf that is keeping dibs on that land and attacks Bhaskar before he can execute much. Now here is the twist, that bite off his back side, makes Bhaskar turn into a werewolf every full moon night when the wolf goes after a few people and eats the meat out of them.
This is just the start of the fun. Amar Kaushik has done horror comedy with Stree before and you guys know how we are big fans of that one flick.
Despite an over-arching SoBo vibe, Varun Dhawan does justice to his Delhi accent as he traverses the “other country” in North East India. With one liners connecting dots with famous jokes, memes and just good old Bollywood references, the movie makes you chuckle and giggle. Environment protection as its core theme – the movie gets it’s bg score and VFX right.
We highly recommend watching the movie in 3D as the graphics and modelling are real sic.
The beauty of the North East part of India and the animal transformations are actually very expertly executed.
Kriti Sanon has a short but meaningful role. The scene stealer is Abhishek Banerjee’s Janardan. The new kid on the block Paalin Kabaak makes his presence felt.
With a tie-in into Stree 2 at the end, the movie does entertain. Yet, it is not Stree material.
Baaki Sab Theek is the most perfect road song many won’t realise it till you have played it in your car. Try it. When you can convince Sukhwinder Singh, and Vishal Dadlani to come together for a song, you know it’s a guaranteed hit & Jungle Mein Kaand proves the same. An unreleased rap remixing of Lata Mangeshkar’s classic ‘Aayega Aayega’ is so cool that the theater was tapping.
Overall, fun watch with some technically excellent aspects, and it’s enough for a weekend binge.