Wild Wild Punjab Review: Forgettable Luv Ranjan Flick

With a runtime of 110 minutes, Luv Ranjan brings another film of bromance and the power of friendship with Wild Wild Punjab, one that can promises to leave everyone laughing. Directed by Simarpreet Singh, the screenplay and dialogues are written by Harman Wadala and Sandeep Jain.

When you get into a Luv Ranjan movie, you know that leaving your morality and rationality out of your mind is the right thing to do. Wild Wild Punjab, following four friends who travel across Punjab to help one of their heartbroken friends get over his breakup, is a mishmash of Ranjan’s previous movies with a bit more madness peppered in giving birth to almost two hours of nonsensical situations that we now prefer to call “madness” as if that’s a term of endearment.

From sudden marriages to a ton of unnecessary fights which include setting a toll booth on fire, Ranjan’s Wild Wild Punjab is a test of patience and makes you question what’s real and what isn’t. Sunny Singh, who isn’t a new face in Ranjan’s universe, comes back to play a similar role to his previous ones but this time around, all four of the characters get equal amount of screentime, with all of their problems taking centre stage on rotation. The female characters, including Patralekhaa’s Radha and Ishita Raj’s Meera, are both forgettable although the latter has something going for her.

The problem with movies like these is that there is no direction or depth to the story – it’s surface level, loud gags where four men do stuff without consequences and there are some women around them. None of their storylines find a definite or interesting end and you will be left wondering about the glaring plot holes long after the runtime is over. Of course, that would be saying that there is a plot to find holes in, which there isn’t. For audiences who feel like watching something mindless with subtle sexism mixed in, this one can be on your watchlist.

Wild Wild Punjab, being a comedy movie, has very few moments which will make you laugh. You can sense that, for example, the aforementioned toll plaza blowing up scene is supposed to be funny. But the events that lead up to these moments do not have logic. They just happen because the script demands it. You don’t understand the characters’ motivations and why someone would slap a police officer (or anyone, for that matter) but they happen. There are random drug peddlers running around with guns and you can’t help but sense that this is supposed to make you laugh but it’s just so bizarre and cringy that it gives you the ick.

And that’s made more glaring because of these half-baked, ultra-macho men whose lack of subtlety and rather brash behaviour is not just disappointing but a tad bit boring at this point. It’s 2024 – the comedy shouldn’t surround four grown men constantly drinking and destroying things, regardless of how broken your heart is. Luv Ranjan’s movies have always made heartbreak as this all-encompassing thing that trumps everything in the world. The behaviour is not only destructive and problematic but also highly disappointing. There needs to be more emotions that men express other than getting angry and drinking until their livers can’t take it anymore.

That being said, Varun Sharma, Sunny Singh, Manjot Singh and Jassi Gill make for a fun watch and they have great chemistry with each other. Their friendship, although questionable, feels genuine. We should’ve explored Gaurav’s (Jassi Gill) one-off comment a bit more to give their friendship some context but that’s probably me asking for too much at this point. As mentioned previously, Patralekhaa and Ishita Raj’s (another Luv Ranjan regular) characters hardly have any characterisation of any kind. But they are fine for the most part.

Wild Wild Punjab Review: Final Thoughts

Ranjan’s last project, 2023’s Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar was an oddly triggering and condescending watch whose misogyny was so well hidden behind its folds that it was hard to spot. Wild Wild Punjab isn’t that because it’s a mindless comedy that tries to be nothing more than a bro-flick on steroids. Its mind-numbing story is sometimes fun and might just make you chuckle once or twice. But, more often than not, viewers will be left scratching their heads wondering what even is happening.

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