Dhoom 2

Supercop ACP Jai Dixit is back, and this time he's after a renowned thief known only as Mr. A, a criminal so devious and ridiculous that he parachutes out the sky, dresses up like an old lady, and then beats people up with a yo-yo snowboard.

While the original Dhoom was stupid, Dhoom 2 catapults the franchise into a world of cinematic hurt even I wasn't expecting. What did I ever do to you to deserve this, Bollywood?

Dhoom 2 cuts back on some of the faux-stylistic excesses of the original, which is a point in its favor. Sadly it’s the only point in its favor, because it also chooses to indulge even more heavily in the sort of lowbrow comedy that you might expect from a bad Wayans brothers or Adam Sandler film. The music has also gotten much, much worse; the film seems intent on reminding you that you are, in fact, watching a sequel to Dhoom every few minutes. I can’t begin to tell you how tired I was of hearing “DHOOM DHOOM DHOOM BACK AGAIN” by the time the film finally ended.

International thief extraordinaire Mr. A is played by Hrithik Roshan, and he’s really the only good thing about the film. The man has charisma to burn and it’s a shame to see him wasting his talent in this crap.

Meanwhile Abhishek Bachchan—returning as supercop Jai Dixit—has stopped shaving, perhaps in an effort to look more like his dad (the legendary Amitabh Bachchan). He’s saddled with a tiresome subplot about his pregnant wife (Rimi Sen) and a hot friend from college Sonali Bose (Bipasha Basu) who has also become a cop.

And Ali (Uday Chopra), who I didn’t find worth mentioning in my review of the first film, returns here as Jai’s extremely irritating comic-relief sidekick. He’s well on his way to becoming Bollywood’s answer to Rob Schneider, if Rob Schneider ever took up singing and dancing.

The action in the movie is ludicrous and the plot is not better.  Mr. A baffles the supercops with his use of disguises as he dresses up like garbage men, statues, old ladies, or chubby guys. Then he escapes on things like magnetically propelled rollerblades and yo-yo snowboards that can deflect bullets and other even goofier gadgets. He’s the X-Games version of James Bond.  But can he escape from his feelings?  Of course not. Seriously, that’s how the plot is going to work things out. Besides, supercop Jai Dixit always gets his man, it says so over here on page 12 of the script!*

The shoddiness carries over to the musical numbers as well; they’re not good.  It’s a shame because Hrithik Roshan can certainly dance, but with music this crappy and dance numbers this uninspired it just doesn’t work. I had some brief hope when they showcased some capoeira/dance at a scene in Brazil but things devolved rapidly.

When you boil it down Dhoom 2 is a lot like a crappy US action movie with lowbrow comedy, a bad soundtrack, lousy dancing, and it’s two and a half hours long. This is the kind of shit I try to avoid watching in the US, only twice as long. At least the original Dhoom was shorter.

*Yes, I believe the script for this movie only had 12 pages.