Flying Jatt is the nice super hero film a very cute guy who listens her mother.
How do you recognise a desi superhero? He’s the guy whose costume is stitched by his mom. And at some point, he flies to the local sabzi mandi because mom needslauki. These were my two favourite moments in A Flying Jatt, in which director and co-writer Remo D’Souza presents what is probably the world’s first Sikh superhero in cinema.
It’s a terrific idea and who better to play the superhero and his bebe than Tiger Shroff and Amrita Singh. He combines an astonishing agility with a guileless demeanour and is entirely convincing as an invincible do-gooder who saves the world. And she has a defined strength of character, which sadly too few filmmakers have put to good use.
A Flying Jatt could have been a fun entertainer with mum as the moral centre. Instead, it is just exhausting.
Some of the blame can be placed on the oversized shoulders of WWE wrestler Nathan Jones, who plays the baddie Raka. Raka, as the name suggests, is an old-school villain (remember the days when all the villains were called Raka and Teja?). Like those guys, he keeps laughing maniacally. He also spends so much time grunting and growling before he actually attacks that I wondered why his opponents didn’t just run away.
Raka is powered by pollution, so the more we pollute, the stronger he gets. Yes, A Flying Jatt is also an eco-fable.
The first half of A Flying Jatt has moments of fun — I loved that despite being a superhero he has a fear of heights, so he flies very close to the ground. But post-interval, laughter takes a back seat. The film trips on the feeble love story between the Jatt and Kirti, a giggling schoolteacher, played by Jacqueline Fernandez. I recently interviewed Jacqueline. She said that she was actively scouting for roles with meat. Forget about meat. This character doesn’t even have a skeleton.
There’s also Kay Kay Menon, an otherwise excellent actor, reduced to hamming wildly — while wearing a supremely awkward curly hairdo and shiny plastic ties!
Of course, A Flying Jatt doesn’t aim to be anything more than an entertaining cartoon. That’s not a problem. But even cartoons need to be compelling and have a basic coherence. Here the narrative alternates between elaborate fights with tacky digitised backdrops and randomly tacked-on sermons about pollution and even the Sikh faith.
At one point Raka growls and declares: “I have a black soul, rooh meri kali hai.” My response — Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.
