Ahmed Khan’s heavily packed third instalment in the ‘Welcome’ franchise spoofs Bollywood’s obsession with jingoism, leaning heavily on Akshay Kumar’s sardonic comic timing.
MUMBAI, June 26 — Bollywood has turned the camera on itself again. Director Ahmed Khan’s Welcome to the Jungle hit theatres this week, presenting a chaotic 165-minute satire about the Indian film industry’s obsession with hyper-nationalism. The third film in the Welcome franchise ditches its original premise, functioning instead as a localized adaptation of Ben Stiller’s 2008 Hollywood hit Tropic Thunder. It’s a messy, overstuffed caper. But does it actually understand its own joke? Critics are heavily divided.
The film’s plot centres on a corrupt billionaire facing an IT raid who attempts a tax-evasion scheme. He funds a ₹2000 crore movie designed to be a massive box-office bomb. The billionaire hires an aggressively incompetent crew, including a pair of delusional directors played by Paresh Rawal and Rajpal Yadav, a visually impaired cameraman (Shreyas Talpade), and two gangsters-turned-actors (Suniel Shetty and Arshad Warsi). Akshay Kumar anchors the chaos as Rajiv, a washed-up former star reduced to Bhojpuri item numbers. The crew is airdropped into a volatile border village for a “guerilla shoot,” oblivious to the fact that the location is a live war zone.
Chaos ensues when real terrorists invade the set.
The villagers mistake the actors for genuine military saviours, while the actors believe the locals are just dedicated extras. Reviewer Rahul Desai noted the film spends its first hour bogged down in “Cartoon Network-like” setups and low-hanging wordplay. The meta-narrative frequently trips over itself. The script features characters making painful puns and breaking the fourth wall to ask audiences to stay for deleted songs during the interval. It even relies on the very nationalism it attempts to mock during the climax.
Yet, the film finds its footing when Akshay Kumar takes over.
Kumar hasn’t showcased this level of self-deprecating comic timing in years. He openly mocks his own career trajectory, referencing his 90s Khiladi and Mohra eras while playing a coward who admits he has no actual patriotism. He’s completely stripped of his usual action-hero vanity. The film surrounds him with a bizarre cast of nostalgic 90s faces and running gags about communication barriers. Johny Lever loses his voice under stress, while an old village matriarch mumbles incoherently.
Welcome to the Jungle isn’t subtle. It targets opportunistic filmmakers, spineless stars, and tax-evasion projects disguised as patriotic spectacles. It frequently blurs the line between being intentionally bad and just poorly executed. But as the industry continues to churn out aggressive, jingoistic action films, this goofy, self-aware misfire offers a surprisingly necessary disruption.
