Film Review | Jai Ho

What we expect from Jai Ho’s trailer: Salman Khan will save his family honour and, by extension, the honour of the nation, in slow motion, single-handedly dispense a battalion of baddies, rattle off repeat-value dialogue, romance a freshly excavated young female whom we might never see on screen again, divest himself of his upper garment and wriggle his bottom.

What we get from Jai Ho the movie: Salman Khan saves his family honour and, by extension, the honour of the nation, in slow motion, single-handedly dispenses a battalion of baddies, rattles off repeat-value dialogue, romances a freshly excavated young female whom we might never see on screen again, divests himself of his upper garment and wriggles his bottom.

An official remake of the 2006 Telugu movie Stalin, and directed by the mass-action hero’s brother Sohail Khan, Jai Ho takes great care to burnish his image as a cuddly hunk. The Pay It Forward-inspired scenario sees Khan’s Jai in the dual role of adviser and enforcer—he asks everybody to be part of a multiplier movement and do three good deeds for one done to them, and he beats up misbehaving louts. In the 1980s, the lumpen hero rose out of the chawl to fight the good fight; now, he conducts his affairs in the middle of the controversial Lavasa luxury residential complex. For the sake of plot, some scenes are allotted to the one-sided relationship between the barrel-chested social worker-cum-vigilante and a simpering next-door neighbour (Daisy Shah) and his equally one-sided clash with a thuggish politician (the beautifully preserved Danny Denzongpa).