Dabangg 3 movie review: For hardcore Chulbul Pandey fans

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Dabangg 3″; Cast; Salman Khan, Sonakshi Sinha, Saiee Manjrekar, Kichcha Sudeep; Direction: Prabhudeva; Rating: * * * (three stars)

At one level, it is easy reviewing “Dabangg 3”. It has everything the hardcore Chulbul fans want, so it’s a great film. For them.

For a 160-minute celebration of recycled kitsch that is vying to be the year’s biggest blockbuster, simply pleasing Salman Khan’s hardcore fan base may not be enough — especially when there is a killing to be made in the Christmas season against a rumoured 90-crore budget. So, “Dabangg 3 opens well beyond the superstar’s familiar turf, in three languages -– Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada — besides the original Hindi version.

That last bit is important to understand how saleability quotient drives the efforts of the makers to craft a commercially profitable product rather than mainstream cinema with some amount of originality. This is Salman’s show all the way, but the villain is a Kannada superstar (Kichcha Sudeep). Calling the shots is Prabhudeva, actor-filmmaker who holds considerable sway in Tamil and Telugu markets. As Bollywood’s mightiest Khan goes down South to explore fresh box office, this new sequel tries rehashing the trademark “Dabangg” spirit that has always revealed a massive hangover of the vintage Madras Cut movie.

This time, Salman and company show us Chulbul Pandey’s life before the first film, pushing a prequel text of sorts in the first half before tying the loose ends in the second. It gives us a back story of Chulbul tracing his romance of the past, marking the debut of actress Saiee Manjrekar in what seems like an extended cameo and little else.

Having Salman romance a much-younger Saiee looks like a mere ploy to let him revisit all that worked in the first “Dabangg”. The chemistry for one -– across those smalltown marketplace sets in the song “Naina lade” -– would hark back to what he did with Sonakshi Sinha’s Rajjo in the first film (remember “Tere mast mast do nain”?). Much of the rom-com situations between Salman and Saiee, as well as the melodrama, are also repeats of winning scenes we have seen before.