August 3, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Vijay Kumar Arora
Hindi with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in India, in London, and in Edinburgh, Scotland, the comedy film “Son of Sardaar 2” (a sequel to the 2012 film “Son of Sardaar”) features an Indian and Pakistani cast of characters (with some white people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: After their respective spouses leave them, a chicken farmer and female entertainer pretend to be married and hide her family’s Pakistani heritage so that the entertainer’s stepdaughter can be accepted by the wealthy Indian family of the stepdaughter’s boyfriend.
Culture Audience: “Son of Sardaar 2” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, the first “Son of Sardaar” movie, and overly long silly comedies.
“Son of Sardaar 2” collapses under the weight of its stupidity and bloated runtime of 147 minutes. This comedy sequel stretches its main concept (parodying tense India–Pakistan relations) to the breaking point with stale and unfunny ethnic jokes. “Son of Sardaar 2” also has a questionable depiction of a gender-non-conforming person, whose gender identity is mocked in an insensitive way.
Directed by Vijay Kumar Arora, “Son of Sardaar 2” was written by Jagdeep Singh Sidhu
and Mohit Jain. The movie is a stand-alone sequel to 2012’s “Son of Sardaar,” which was a remake of the 2010 Telugu film “Maryada Ramanna.” The first “Son of Sardaar” movie was terrible, and this sequel is not an improvement.
In “Son of Sardaar 2,” Ajay Devgn reprises his staring role as Jaswinder “Jassi” Singh Randhawa. In the first “Son of Sardaar” movie, he was set to marry Sukhmeet “Sukh” Kaur Sandhu (played by Sonakshi Sinha), but that relationship is not mentioned in “Son of Sardaar 2.” Instead, Jassi is married to a woman named Dimple (played by Neeru Bajwa), who is in their native India, while chicken farmer Jassi is in Scotland and trying to get a permanent resident visa for Dimple to live with him in Scotland. Jassi has been trying for 11 years to get this visa.
Jassi and Dimple do not have any children together. Jassi lives with his overprotective and religious Hindu mother Bebe (played by Dolly Ahluwalia), who calls him frequently when she’s not with him. And then, one day, Jassi’s wish comes true: Dimple’s visa gets approved.
When Jassi meets Dimple at the airport, Dimple is accompanied by two people: a man named Robin (played by Mohan Singh Randhawa) and a woman named Disha, whom Dimple introduces as a couple who are her friends. Jassi gets the shock of his life when Dimple tells Jassi that Robin is actually Dimple’s lover, and she doesn’t want to be married to Jassi anymore. Jassi takes the breakup very hard and is reluctant to get divorced.
Meanwhile, a Pakistani Muslim family of musical entertainers in Scotland also experience a bad breakup. Danish (played by Chunky Panday), the family patriarch, is a probable alcoholic who suddenly abandons the family: Danish’s wife Rabia (played by Mrunal Thakur); Rabia’s siblings Gul (played by Deepak Dobriyal) and Mehwish (played by Kubbra Sait); and Danish’s young-adult daughter Saba (played by Roshni Walia), who was born from Danish’s previous marriage. Saba’s biological mother is deceased.
The “meet cute” moment for Jassi and Rabia happens when Jassi is scheduled to have a lunch meeting at a restaurant with a female divorce lawyer who was recommended to him. Jassi doesn’t know what this attorney looks like, so when Rabia walks by, he wrongly assumes that Rabia is the attorney. Rabia is at the restaurant for a blind date, and she thinks that Jassi is her blind date.
When Jassi begins talking to Rabia about how much she charges for her services, Rabia slaps him in anger because she thinks that Jassi mistakenly believes that she’s a sex worker. The matter is resolved when the real divorce lawyer (played by Nav Ghotra) shows up. Jassi and Rabia develop a predictable attraction to each other. Jassi eventually meets the rest of Rabia’s boisterous family.
Saba and her boyfriend Goggi (played by Sahil Mehta) are madly in love with each other. However, Goggi’s wealthy Indian family—especially his father Raja (played by Ravi Kishan)—is very conservative and prejudiced against Pakistani people. Goggi’s family always has armed security guards nearby. Through a series of circumstances, Jassi and Rabia hatch a plan to pretend to be a married Indian couple, in order for Saba to be accepted into Goggi’s family. Many ridiculous hijinks then pollute the movie.
The other members of Goggi’s family are Raja’s meddling and judgmental brothers Tony (played by Mukul Dev, in his last film role before he died in May 2025) and Tittu (played by Vindu Dara Singh), who had the same roles in the first “Son of Sardaar” movie; Raja’s wife/Goggi’s mother Premlata (played by Ashwini Kalsekar); Raja’s father Ranjit Singh (played by Sharat Saxena); and Ranjit’s wife Kim (played by Emma Kate Vansittart), who barely says anything in the movie.
Goggi’s elderly grandmother Kim used to be a pole dancer when she was young. As already revealed in the “Son of Sadaar” trailer, Kim does a pole-dancing performance that goes horribly wrong because she falls and dies. (Mia Lacey Redmond is the pole-dancing body double in this scene.) Jassi is the only witness to this accident. And he’s terrified of being blamed for Kim’s death, so there are more lies and cover-ups.
The Singh family has a buffoonish longtime neighbor named Bantu Pandey (played by Sanjay Mishra), a milk delivery person, who shows up fairly late in the movie, when wedding preparations have been made for Goggi and Saba. Bantu is part of a plot twist in the movie. This plot twist is a desperate attempt to salvage a misguided story.
“Son of Sardaar 2” has fairly good cinematography, but the movie’s production design is garish. A few of the not-funny-at-all gags involve a certain tea that has intoxicating/hallucinatory effects on anyone who drinks it. (You can easily guess that Jassi will be one of the people who drinks this tea.) The movie has some cartoonish animation to portray little aliens taking over brain cells when this tea is consumed. It all looks so tacky.
The rest of “Son of Sardaar 2” is a repeat loop of mind-numbing slapstick and scenarios where Jassi has to pretend that he was a jingoistic military colonel who fought against Pakistanis because it’s one of many lies that he nervously tells hard-to-please Raja. Meanwhile, Rabia and her family pretend to be Indians who are xenophobic against Pakistanis. Gul is either a transgender woman or gender-fluid (the movie never says which), but is not a drag queen. The movie makes Gul’s gender identity a joke when Gul says things such as Gul is a woman on the outside but a man on the inside.
The exaggerated performances in “Son of Sardaar 2” can best be described as “trying too hard to be funny in an embarrassingly horrible movie.” “Son of Sardaar 2” is an endurance test of bad comedy and bombastic song-and-dance numbers with unimpressive songs, including a horrendous scene where several ghosts come out of a graveyard to sing and dance with the main characters. Avoid this irritating film, unless you enjoy having a movie insult your intelligence for nearly two-and-a-half hours.
Panorama Studios released “Son of Sardaar 2” in select U.S. cinemas and in India on August 1, 2025.
