Sardarji **
Dir: Rohit Jugraj.
With: Diljit Dosanjh, Neeru Bajwa, Mandy Takhar, Jas Heer. 141 mins. Cert: PG
The Indian popular
cinema’s best-kept secret is that it’s actually several cinemas in one. The
Hindi movies that dominate the box-office obscure the Punjabi, Malayalam, Tamil and
Telugu productions emerging from separate regions of this vast country; though
directors and stars have been known to switch between them, each cinema retains
its own distinct tenors and textures (and, indeed, audience). If Sardarji, the new vehicle for
actor-singer Diljit Dosanjh, is in any way typical, Punjabi filmmakers are
happy to push beyond standard Bollywood broadness towards full-on wackiness:
here is a cinema where the sound of the pennywhistle still enjoys some comic
currency.
The tone of Rohit
Jugraj’s film can be discerned from the early episode that finds Dosanjh’s
Jaggi, the Punjab’s foremost ghost hunter, called upon to cleanse a classroom
haunted by a stick-in-the-mud schoolmaster. Jaggi, whose MO is to engage with
his spectral quarries on their own terms, quickly assumes the role of diligent
student, and finds himself mired in a debate about milk’s effect on human
digestion; the conversation concludes with the tutor’s admission that he’s been
feeling terribly constipated since passing over – a revelation that cues a loud
farting noise, as if to underscore the fact we are many, many miles from
Kipling.
This encounter
actually serves some narrative purpose, for Jaggi – having bottled his prey –
realises he needs the schoolmaster’s linguistic skills for his next mission: to
rid an English stately home of its resident white witch. You know heritage
cinema is back when even Punjabi filmmakers are poking around reject Downton locations, and the script’s
suggestion of unfinished business between India and the UK is mildly
intriguing: one of Jaggi’s catches bemoans the domestic legacy of colonial rule
– that men still treat their women like slaves – while the finale, with its
Queen Elizabeth cameo, imagines a scenario wherein Her Maj might make up for
the Raj.
One further loose end
is that the spook Jaggi is after turns out to be an old flame, whose demise in
a belltower accident appears another of the movies’ myriad Vertigo homages. Still, all comparisons stop there. At best, Sardarji exudes a naïve charm: its
modest effects sequences recall those European knockoffs – think Ghost Chase or High Spirits – which flooded the VHS market in the years between Poltergeist and Ghost. For 141 minutes, however, it holds no more depth than the
selfies Jaggi insists on taking: it’s silly rather than especially funny, and
its obvious budgetary limitations negate any claims to blockbuster
entertainment.
Though the usual
London landmarks are ticked off, the film succumbs to the same bathos as
numerous poverty-row Britflicks, and it hardly helps that 21st
century Indian cinema, of whatever stripe, has yet to recruit a single credible
English-speaking native. (Where do these actors, with their mangled speech
patterns, come from? Is someone carving them out of Chippendale furniture?)
It’s not an unpleasant watch, the affable Dosanjh this close to bursting into lovelorn or rabble-rousing song
throughout. Yet the zaniness isn’t enough: there’s no character beneath the
quirks, merely ghosts of jokes, whose presence requires punching up with sound
effects.
Sardarji is now playing in selected cinemas.
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