Priyadarshan is no longer a part of Hera Pheri 3, and my last hope of watching a mainstream Hindi comedy that doesn’t rely on offensive or brain-dead humour is gone.
Indian comedy desperately needs a revival, but that cannot come through films such as Welcome to the Jungle. The jokes make little sense, the scenes are overly illogical, and the film has no emotional grounding. In one scene, a commander, played by Vindu Dara Singh, orders Aftab Shivdasani’s character to throw fruit at the enemy as a weapon. The fruit lands on a landmine; it explodes, and somehow, the audience is expected to laugh.
It’s not that the jokes in Hera Pheri were always sophisticated. But they were at least rooted in the everyday struggles of the middle class. None of us would mistake a fruit for a bomb (hopefully). But we do struggle to find a job like Ghanshyam (Suniel Shetty) does, dream big like Raju (Akshay Kumar), and know an old man who behaves like Baburao (Paresh Rawal).
Why ‘Hera Pheri’ worked
The opening of Hera Pheri sets the context. Ghanshyam walks into a bank to claim the job he believes is his, only to be pushed from one desk to another. If you have ever visited a government office or even a public sector bank, chances are you have experienced that frustration.
Then comes Raju’s introduction. He dreams he is rich, driving a sports car, and frolicking with women. Then the dream abruptly ends. It’s morning. Reality calls. He has to get ready for work.
The “Devi ka prasad” line by Baburao is another example. In the scene, a caller misdials his number and mistakes him for Devi Prasad. On paper, it is not an extraordinary joke. It is the awkwardness with which Baburao delivers it, his personality, and the situation that make it funny.
The humour in Hera Pheri always stems from characters rather than a desperate, manufactured punchline.
By the time all three characters are introduced, the universe of Hera Pheri feels complete. The exaggeration never exceeds the film’s reality. The characters, their struggles, and every hilarious interaction between them are familiar. That is why the film is still funny 26 years later—a hard thing to do with comedy.
In Welcome to the Jungle, the characters have no lives of their own. From Akshay Kumar to Arshad Warsi, every actor is playing a caricatured version of themselves. It’s a little like The Rock, who always plays himself in a movie.
In Hera Pheri, the characters fight for pennies. In Welcome to the Jungle, they’re fighting over hundreds of crores. The former is funny and relatable no matter who is in the audience. The latter is a rinse-and-repeat of the Dhamaal (2007) formula.
These days, Bollywood subsides on badly created sequels. We deserve a fresh comedy from the master of laugh himself, and not another Bhoot Bangla (2026). I want to see the youth trying to find a job, the jugaad of the middle class, and street-smart characters. Preferably shot at actual locations or at least some realistic set design.
People in modern comedies now come well-dressed and sleek-haired. They joke in a sophisticated Hindi no one speaks. They stand in one place and deliver lines, accounting for the commas and full stops in the script. These films are walkie-talkie conversations visualised: one actor says their line, the other waits for the signal from the spotboy, and then says their own.
Contrast this with Hera Pheri. It was chaos. The characters always interrupted each other, the comedy was physical as well as dialogue-driven, the clothing and hair looked realistic, and the language was anything but sophisticated.
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The sequel we need
Movies today can’t be rewatched. Would you put yourself through Son of Sardaar 2 (2025) again? Do you remember a single scene from Kis Kisko Pyaar Karoon 2 (2025), while Jolly LLB first parts had recalled value, but the third part released in 2025, despite bringing both they main lead of Jolly LLB 3 (2025), do not have the recall value.
We all remember the iconic fight between Raju and Ghanshyam, where Baburao ends up getting undressed. Every second line by Baburao is ingrained in our brains. But do you remember a single scene from Housefull 5, which was dropping with double entendres?
This is not because the actors were better. The actor is the same. Today, he earns much more and even has teleprompters to read his dialogues. What has changed is the director’s vision and style of storytelling.
If there is one sequel India needs, it is Hera Pheri 3. And there can be no Hera Pheri—at least a funny one—without Priyadarshan’s direction.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)