Diljit Dosanjh is a big name in Punjab. After Udta Punjab, he thought he would fly high in the Hindi belt as well. So what does the Sardarji with the attitude and the altitude do now?
In Super Singh, he decides to literally fly high on screen with the aid of some of the worst special effects you will see on this side of the Ryan Reynolds in Dead Pool. The self-deprecatory super-hero of Dead Pool is adapted in a desi context and seen threshing in stagnant waters as he tries hard to be India’s coolest turbaned super-hero. Not much competition there, considering Tiger Shroff in A Flying Jatt is the only other member of the turbaned super-hero cub. Looking at the box-office fate of Tiger’s turbaned act, I wonder why the same producers (Balaji Films) decided to ‘Fly Sikh’ this time with Dosanjh.
Dosanjh tries really hard to be funny in the trailer. It’s like watching Shatrughan Sinha doing a Govinda. In fact Dosanjh’s efforts are so broad and exaggerated in the trailer, you wonder what happened to the restrained reined-in actor we saw in Anurag Singh’s Punjab 1984 - a hard hitting intense drama set after Operation Bluestar where Dosanjh was cast as the missing Sikh son of the distraught mother Kirron Kher. Watching Dosanjh’s bizarre and woefully inadequate antics in the trailer of Super Singh, I wondered when the actor disappeared into the exhibitionist clown who thinks he can do anything just because he has a captive fan-following.
Super Singh is a lamentable legacy of the Punjabi star’s overweening ambitions. He is loud and brash. He is Ryan Reynolds without the chutzpah or the balls. I sincerely hope the trailer is misleading in the manner in which Diljit Dosanjh is projected. If he is indeed as big a ham as the trailer shows him to be, then I am afraid the entertainer should just cash in on his antics on stage and forget about being a good actor. Inept comic episodes, clumsy romancing are the hallmark of Dosanjh’s tacky super-heroism. In one embarrassing moment of coy machismo, Dosanjh requests his co-star Sonam Bajwa to turn her face the other way as he must slap his thigh before flying to save the world.
Dosanjh should be slapping his face rather than thighs for the ludicrous levels being achieved by his career. After the insipid performance in Phillauri, his image as the hottest star of Punjab seems bound to suffer a setback with Super Singh.
To make matters worse Dosanjh has recently been seen with his hair chopped off without the traditional turban in some pictures that have gone viral. That makes his turbaned act in Super Singh specially ironical. The Super Sardarji is no longer a turbaned super-hero. He is just a pretender under that turban.
