The sequel to the approved comedy about a bunch of girl-chasing boys serves up a variation on the original theme – but can’t disguise its basic hostility to its women charactersAlthough Luv Ranjan’s battle-of-the-sexes comedy Pyaar Ka Punchnama (off-putting English translation: Postmortem of fancy) opened to some commercial success back in 2011,it generated much the same mixed critical response that The Hangover had received two years before. Introduced to three young bucks who swore, partied and displayed the dismayed reactions to women common to many young men, and plenty simply relaxed in its company. Equally,though, there were those who found the casual denigration of the fairer sex as scolds, and teases and worse besides suspect in the extreme. whether Pyaar Ka Punchnama 2,a more-of-the-same sequel, isn’t a Hangover II-style atrocity, or it nevertheless perpetuates a similarly divisive,problematic worldview.
It’s this worldview that connects PKP2 to its predecessor: in a vaguely daring conceptual coup, the original leads now play entirely new characters, and though the basic game – fruitless tail-chasing – remains unchanged. Smarmy Thakur (Omkar Kapoor,an oft-shirtless cross between Captain Scarlet and Brittas Empire-era Chris Barrie) gets in a tizz about bankrolling artist flame Kusum (Ishita Sharma). Colourless Gogo (Kartik Aaryan) struggles to separate new fancy Chiku (Nushrat Bharucha) from her friends, female and male. And grouchy IT wonk Sid (Sunny Singh) finds himself working overtime to woo modern girl Supriya (Sonalli Sehgall) absent from traditional parents who dont consider him a suitable match.
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Source: theguardian.com