Pooja Hegde Archives – CULTURE MIX

Review: ‘Retro’ (2025), starring Suriya, Pooja Hegde, Joju George, Jayaram, Sujith Shankar, Gajaraj and Vidhu

May 3, 2025

by Carla Hay

Suriya and Jayaram in “Retro” (Photo courtesy of Prime Media)

“Retro” (2025)

Directed by Karthik Subbaraj

Telugu with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in India, from the 1960s to 1998, the action film “Retro” features a predominantly Indian cast of characters (with some white people and some black people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: An aggressive thug has conflicts with his lady love, who wants him to give up his criminal lifestyle, and he gets an early release from prison so that he can infiltrate a “fight club” cult on a remote island, where he impersonates a comedy therapist.

Culture Audience: “Retro” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and don’t mind watching movies that are too long and too stupid.

Vidhu in “Retro” (Photo courtesy of Prime Media)

A complete tonal mess, “Retro” can’t decide if it wants to be a brutal action film or a wacky lighthearted comedy. It’s a strange and idiotic story about a gloomy thug who has to learn how to laugh. Song-and-dance numbers are awkwardly thrown into the mix.

Written and directed by Karthik Subbaraj, “Retro” has too much going on and yet none of it is meaningful or makes any sense. And to make matters worse, this wretched movie has an overly indulgent 168-minute runtime. If you watch this abomination from beginning to end, you might never get back that precious time and valuable brain cells.

“Retro” (which takes place in India) begins in the city of Mudarai, in the 1960s, when an orphan named Paarivel “Paari” Kannan is adopted as a baby by Sandhya (played by Swasika), the wife of a ruthless gangster named Thilagan (played by Joju George), who wants nothing to do with raising this child. The movie’s cast members who have the role of Paari are Nithran Sai as pre-teen Paari, Harish as teenage Paari, and Suriya as adult Paari. For reasons that are not explained in the movie, Paari finds it difficult to smile, so a big part of the plot is about his lady love and other people trying to get him to smile.

Sandhya dies when Paari is a teenager. Her dying wish was for Paari to learn how to smile. During the funeral, Paari saves Thilagan from an attack. As a result, Thilagan begins to respect Paari and starts grooming him to become part of Thilagan’s criminal activities. As a teenager, Paari meets and falls in love with Rukimini “Rukku” Paari (played by Aavni), who will become his future wife.

Thilagan remarries in 1989. He and his second wife have three biological sons (played by Nithish, Thirshiv and Sanjay), while adult Paari has followed Thilagan into the criminal lifestyle. In 1993, Paari reconnects with his sweetheart Rukmini (played by Pooja Hegde), who is now a veterinarian, and he asks her to marry him. Rukmini says she will only marry Paari if he leaves behind his life of crime and becomes a upstanding, law-abiding person.

Paari agrees to this ultimatum and gets the blessing of Rukmini’s widowed father (played by Singampuli) to marry Rukmini. The wedding ceremony of Paari and Rukmini is a joyous celebration—except that Rukmini and her father are uncomfortable that Thilagan has shown up with his gangster cronies, after Thilagan was explicitky told not to bring his criminal associates to the wedding. Paari makes a profuse apology to Rukmini and promises that nothing will bad happen.

And that’s the moment when you know that something very bad is going to happen. At the wedding reception, Paari tells Thilagan that Paari no longer wants to be a criminal and that it was a “mistake” to get involved in criminal activities. Thilagan’s response is to slap Paari very hard and call him a “bloody orphan.” As if to prove that he’s done with his life of crime, Paari refuses to give information in an upcoming arms deal that has the code name Gold Fish.

Things get worse when Thilagan’s gangster cronies start attacking Paari, who fights back in self-defense with a machete. Thilagan tries to kill Rukmini, but Paari cuts off one of Thilagan’s lower right arm at the elbow By the end of this bloody brawl, a few of the gangsters are dead. Paari gets arrested. A horrified and disgusted Rukmini refuses to talk to Paari before he is hauled off to jail. She cuts off all contact with him.

Paari is convicted of murder and sentenced to prison, where one of the movie’s cheesy musical numbers takes place in a prison yard. While he’s in prison, Paari hears that Rukmini and her father have moved to another state in India. Five years pass while Paari is in prison. During those five years, he has heard that Rukmini’s father has died, and she is now working for a non-governmental organization.

The next plot development is when “Retro” starts to get bizarre and stupid: Paari is given an early release from prison because he’s being sent to a mysterious island, where he’s told he has to be involved in amateur fighting. It sounds too good to be true to Paari, but he takes the offer anyway because he understandably wants to get out of prison.

Meanwhile, Thilagan (who now uses a robotic prosthetic right arm) has ordered some of his goons to find Rukmini. Why? Because Thilagan is still angry that Paari quit the gangster lifestyle. Thilagan wants to use Rukmini as bait to convince Paari to go back to being a criminal. It’s a nonsensical plan that ends up being a subplot that goes nowhere.

Shortly after Paari has gotten out of prison, Paari meets Dr. Chaplin Lolly (played by Jayaram), who has the nickname the Laughing Therapist because Dr. Lolly does stand-up comedy as part of his “therapy sessions. Paari doesn’t remember Dr. Lolly at first. Dr. Lolly reminds Paari that they first met when Paari was in prison and Dr. Lolly did a stand-up comedy show for the prison inmates. When Dr. Lolly asked Paari why Paari wasn’t laughing during this comedy show, Paari told Dr. Lolly that he ever laughed it was during a part of his childhood that was too long ago to remember.

The movie takes a turn for the worse when Paari hires Dr. Lolly to go with Paari and some cohorts to Black Island, where they settle in at a place called Laughter Hospital. Paari pretends to be Dr. Lolly and does some terrible stand-up comedy for hospital patients, where Paari wears a red clown nose and a bowler hat. Paari tries to force himself to laugh during these shows. It’s as cringeworthy as it sounds.

And what a coincidence: Rukmini shows up at the hospital. She’s still a veterinarian, but she’s also now an anti-poaching activist because this island has a lot of wildlife that is being poached. The island is ruled by Lord Milton (played by Gajaraj) and his son Freddie Milton (played by Sujith Shankar), an animal abuser who sexually harasses Rukmini. And you know what that means: Paari is going to fight Freddie.

There’s also a moronic subplot about a cult on the island called the Rubber Cult, which has Rubber War games that area combination of gladiator style and mixed-martials arts, with the game participants wearing rubber suits. The opponents in these games are rich people versus enslaved poor people. The rich people wear black rubber suits. The poor people wear red rubber suits.

Paari is forced to be on the “underdog” poor people’s team. An egotistical lout named Michael Mirasu (played by Vidhu), who likes to call himself King Michael, is in charge of these games. The action scenes during the Rubber War games are unrealistic and an assault on viewers’ intelligence.

The acting in “Retro” is atrocious. The film editing is extremely sloppy. The screenplay and direction are beyond incompetent. All of this adds up to “Retro” being convoluted junk that is no fun to watch and should be avoided at all costs.

Prime Media released “Retro” in select U.S. cinemas on May 1, 2025, the same day that the movie was released in India.

Review: ‘Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan,’ starring Salman Khan, Pooja Hegde, Venkatesh and Jagapathi Babu

April 26, 2023

by Carla Hay

“Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan”

Directed by Farhad Samji

Hindi with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in India, the action film “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan” (a remake of the 2014 film “Veeram”) features an all-Indian cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A marriage-phobic vigilante teams up with his three foster brothers to fight crime, including trying to stop a murder plot against the family of his love interest.

Culture Audience: “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of “Veeram,” the movie’s headliners, and mindless action movies that are aggressively stupid.

Siddharth Nigam, Pooja Hegde, Raghav Juyal and Jassie Gill in “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan” (Photo courtesy of Zee Studios)

Get ready for your hearing and your brain cells to be assaulted when watching the loud, bombastic and idiotic “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan.” Note to filmmakers who make this type of trash: Stop the madness. Cast people who can act. It’s the same junk: a ‘hero’ in fake action scenes, a pretty love interest, revenge plots, murders. No one respects overly long, boring, and unoriginal garbage.

Directed by Farhad Samji (who co-wrote the mindless screenplay with Sparsh Khetarpal and Tasha Bhambra), “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan” is yet another unnecessary remake that is inferior to the original movie. “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan” (which means “someone’s brother, someone’s lover” in Hindi) is a remake of the 2014 Tamil-language film “Veeram.” There’s so much bad acting in “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan,” you have to wonder if the filmmakers made these choices as a way to torture viewers, who will already have their endurance tested by the movie’s 144-minute total running time and the excessively loud sound design throughout the entire film.

In “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan,” the dimwit protagonist with a lot of muscles but very little charm is Bhaijaan, nicknamed Bhai (played by Salman Khan), a never-married bachelor who doesn’t seem to be doing anything with his life but being a violent vigilante who fights crime in his home city of Delhi. As shown later in the movie, Bhai has this to say about men who cry tears when expressing emotions: “Crying is for losers.” Bhai has three sidekicks in his crime-fighting efforts: Ishq (played by Raghav Juyal), Moh (played by Jassie Gill) and Love (played by Siddharth Nigam), who all call themselves brothers of Bhai.

These four men are actually not biologically related to each other. It’s revealed in a flashback shown early on in the movie that Ishq, Moh and Love were orphans. Bhai rescued Ishq, Moh and Love from an orphanage fire when Ishq, Moh and Love were about 6 or 7 years old, and Bhai was about 16 or 17. Bhai raised Ishq, Moh and Love as if they were his brothers.

In the flashback, Bhai only looks about 10 years older than Ishq, Moh and Love. In the present day, Bhai looks about 20 to 25 years older than his “brothers.” It’s one of many examples of how the movie is sloppily made. Salman Khan’s mother Salma Khan is the main producer of “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan,” which is obviously a family vanity project. It’s a lot easier to get cast in the starring role of movie, no matter how terrible your acting is, if you have a parent who’s paying for the movie to get made.

The brotherly bond between these four men is so tight, it’s affected all of their love lives. Bhai is commitment-phobic when it comes to love and romance. He has said he never wants to get married. Ishq, Moh and Love crave Bhai’s approval, so they say the same things. However, Ishq, Moh and Love secretly have girlfriends, who are growing frustrated that they can’t be open about their respective relationships with Ishq, Moh and Love.

Ishq’s girlfriend is Sukoon (played by Shehnaaz Gill), Moh’s girlfriend is Muskaan (played by Palak Tiwari), and Love’s girlfriend is Chahat (played by Vinali Bhatnagar). Sukoon, Muskaan and Chahat don’t have a lot of screen time. But when they do appear, it’s only to whine about their love lives.

In fact, “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan” cares so little about women, the only women characters with significant speaking roles in the movie mainly exist for the purpose of being love interests for the men. It’s all very backwards and unimaginative filmmaking, just like many other aspects of this very outdated-looking movie.

Ishq, Moh and Love want to go public with their girlfriends, so they hatch a plot to find a girlfriend for Bhai. The idea is that if Bhai falls in love, he will ease up on his rigid view that these four “brothers” cannot have serious love relationships. Ishq, Moh and Love know that Bhai had a serious romance when he was younger with a woman named Bhagyalakshmi, nicknamed Bhagya.

Ishq, Moh and Love heard that Bhagya currently lives in Mumbai. And so, these three “Brothers” decide to find her and play matchmaker. But these three dolts don’t do what most people in modern society would do: an Internet search to find out first what Bhagya’s relationship status is. When they get to Mumbai, they find out that Bhagya is happily married with a child. Once again, it’s outdated filmmaking and stupidity on display.

This matchmaking farce just wastes time in this already bloated movie. The next unrealistic thing that Ishq, Moh and Love do is try to find a woman named Bhagyalakshmi, nicknamed Bhagya, who is attractive enough to date Bhai. That’s how Bhai meets Bhagyalakshm “Bhagya” Gundamaneni (played by Pooja Hegde), who works as an “antiques researcher.” Bhagya, who also calls herself “Bhaggy,” lives in Andhra Pradesh, India.

Bhai and Bhagya have their “meet cute” moment when she bumps into him at an outdoor market in Hyderabad, and she drops an antique vase that goes crashing on the ground. Bhai is immediately smitten with the new Bhagya in his life, but she predictably plays hard-to-get. Bhagya is probably one of the most annoying characters in the movie because she’s a stereotype of a helpless and ditzy “damsel in distress” who’s waiting to be rescued by a male love interest. It doesn’t help that Hegde’s terrible acting is hard to watch.

Bhagya tells Bhai up front that any man she dates has to get the approval of her brother Balakrishna Gundamaneni (played by Venkatesh), who is domineering and overprotective. Balakrishna, who is married with a young daughter, also hates violence. And since Bhai leads a very violent life, much of the movie is about his trying to hide the truth from Bhagya and her family.

Every action movie at least one villain. And in “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan,” there are two villains: First, there is Mahavir (played by Vijender Singh), who is the type of villain who wears a lot of business suits. Mahavir hates how Bhai and his sidekicks are ruining his criminal enterprises, so he wants to kill all four of these vigilantes.

The other villain is Kodati Nageshwar (played by Jagapathi Babu), a thug who wants to kill Balakrishna and all of the members of Balakrishna’s immediate family. This revenge killing was already planned before Bhai and Bhagya started dating each other. The reason for this murder plot is so obvious, because the movie has no subtlety in showing and repeating how fanatical Balakrishna is about being against violence.

“Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan” has some standard musical numbers which further drag out an already vapid story. The songs in these musical scenes are forgettable and trite. Salman Khan is not a skilled dancer, so it’s somewhat amusing to see him try to keep up with the backup dancers in these musical scenes. That amusement is slight though, and it will just give way to more irritation as “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan” keeps piling on scenes that are idiotic and don’t really go anywhere, including some scenes that have obnoxiously blatant product-placement shilling of Pepsi.

Filmmakers will continue to churn out dreck like “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan” if they think it will make them any money. That doesn’t mean that people who like movies automatically have to watch this type of relentless insult to viewers’ intelligence. Avoid “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan” at all costs. Your brain cells will thank you.

Zee Studios released “Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan” in select U.S. cinemas and in India on April 21, 2023.

Review: ‘Cirkus’ (2022), starring Ranveer Singh, Varun Sharma, Pooja Hegde and Jacqueline Fernandez

December 28, 2022

by Carla Hay

“Cirkus”

Directed by Rohit Shetty

Hindi with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in the India, in the 1960s and briefly in the 1930s, the comedy film “Cirkus” features an Indian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: Two sets of identical twin brothers are separated and switched at birth by a scientist who wants to test the “nature versus nurture” debate, in order to prove his theory that someone’s upbringing has more influence on their personality than biological genetics.

Culture Audience: “Cirkus” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching an aggressively hyperactive and annoying movie with a horrible story about twins and mistaken identities.

Siddhartha Jadhav, Umakant Patil and Ashish Warang in “Cirkus” (Photo courtesy of T-Series Films)

The vibrant cinematography and eye-catching production design of “Cirkus” are all wasted on a silly plot, bad acting and an unjustifiably atrocious ending that ignores ethical and legal issues of deliberately switching babies at birth. It’s a so-called comedy that will bring very few or no laughs to people who care about quality entertainment. The only thing that’s worth laughing at is how the “Cirkus” filmmakers spent a great deal of the movie’s budget on elaborate set designs and visual effects but then made the cheap-looking decision to have obvious toy dolls instead of real babies in the brief time that infants are shown on screen.

Directed by Rohit Shetty and written by Yunus Sajawal, “Cirkus” is loosely based on the William Shakespeare play “The Comedy of Errors,” which has hijinks that ensue when identical twin brothers have been separated at birth. It feels almost like blasphemy to mention Shakespeare and “Cirkus” in the same sentence, because it’s like comparing priceless art to worthless garbage. “Cirkus” is just too repetitive and too stupid to justify its total running time of 140 minutes. About 30 minutes into this abomination of a movie, viewers will feel like it’s less painful to have a circus elephant sit on them than to sit through watching all of “Cirkus.”

“Cirkus” begins by showing the two brothers who cause the chaos that later happens in the story. Sometime in the 1930s, Dr. Roy Jamnadas (played by Murali Sharma) and his younger brother Joy Jamnadas (played by Uday Tikekar) are operating Jamnadas Orphanage in Bangalore, India. One day, Roy and Joy find two pairs of newborn, identical twin brothers abandoned on the doorstep of the orphanage. The two pairs of twins are around the same age.

Roy decides that he wants to do an experiment to test the “nature versus nurture” debate, in order to prove his theory that someone’s personality is influenced more by that person’s upbringing than biological genetics. Roy wants to switch the identical twins, so that each twin will grow up with a brother he thinks is biologically related but actually is not biologically related. Joy vehemently objects to this very unethical and illegal decision, but Roy is determined to go through with it, and nothing can stop him.

The identical twins are switched so that one of the twin brothers is placed with a twin from the other pair who is biologically unrelated. When all four twin brothers are put up for adoption, they are presented as fraternal twins, not identical twins. Roy promises Joy that he will reveal the truth to all four brothers when the brothers are 30 years old. When Joy asks Roy what will happen if Roy isn’t alive in 30 years, Roy gives a vague response that maybe someone else can tell the twins the truth. Of course, in a predictable movie like “Cirkus,” Roy and Joy live for the next 30 years and show up again in the movie.

And what a coincidence: Both pairs of twins are adopted into families who want to name the twins after the Jamnadas brothers. One pair of the fake fraternal twins named Roy and Joy go to the Indian city of Ooty, where they have been adopted by a circus owner (played by Nikitin Dheer) and his wife (played by Supriya Roy). The other set of the fake fraternal twins named Roy and Joy stay in Bangalore, where they have been adopted by an affluent industrial engineer (played by Arjun Nagar) and his wife Shakuntala Devi (played by Ashwini Kalsekar).

After the babies quickly getting adopted, “Cirkus” briefly shows the two Roys and the two Joys as pre-teen children and teenagers. In these roles are Pratyaksh Panwar as pre-teen Roy, Hridansh Gokani as pre-teen Joy, Arya Mahajan as teenage Roy, and Krishna Panchal as teenage Joy. The movie then fast-forwards to showing the brothers at 30 years old.

For the purposes of this review, the Roy and Joy who grew up in Ooty will be called Ooty Roy and Ooty Joy. The Roy and Joy who grew up in Bangalore will be called Bangalore Roy and Bangalore Joy. Just like the brothers they were named after, Roy is the “alpha male” brother, while Joy is the “beta male” brother. Ooty Roy and Bangalore Roy are both played by Ranveer Singh. Ooty Joy and Bangalore Joy are both played by Varun Sharma.

Ooty Roy and Ooty Joy have taken over running their adoptive family’s circus, which is called Jubilee Cirkus, since their adoptive parents have retired. Ooty Roy has become a famous circus attraction known as Electric Man, for being physically immune when holding objects that conduct large wattages of electricity. Meanwhile, Bangalore Roy feels the effects of these electric jolts every time Ooty Roy does these electrical stunts. It’s a bizarre condition that Ooty Roy and Bangalore Roy have had since their childhoods. (No explanation is given in the movie for why they have this condition.)

The jolts are so big, Bangalore Roy can give people electrical shocks that can be harmful if they touch him. Bangalore Roy doesn’t know why he randomly gets these electrical jolts that run through his body and sometimes cause him to convulse wildly. Expect to see “Cirkus” show a lot of over-exaggerated slapstick comedy (that gets stale very quickly) of people getting electrical shocks and sometimes having seizures from these shocks.

Ooty Roy is happily married to a novelist named Mala (played by Pooja Hegde), who can’t get her work published under her real name for sexist reasons, so she uses the alias Col. Vikrant. And what a coincidence: Col. Vikrant’s biggest fan is Bangalore Roy. Ooty Joy has a girlfriend named Lily (played by Radhika Bangia). Bangalore Joy does not have a love interest in the movie.

The only discontent in the marriage between Mala and Ooty Roy is that they haven’t been able to conceive a child because Mala is infertile. Ooty Roy and Mala are seriously thinking about adopting a child. Mala wants to adopt a child from Jamnadas Orphanage, but Ooty Roy doesn’t like that idea. (You know where this is going, of course.)

Meanwhile, Bangalore Roy has a girlfriend named Bindu (played by Jacqueline Fernandez), whose arrogant and wealthy father Rai Sahab (played by Sanjay Mishra) does not approve of Bangalore Roy dating Bindu, because Rai thinks Bangalore Roy doesn’t come from a rich-enough family. By contrast, Bindu’s kind and open-minded mother Chachi (played by Sulabha Arya) accepts the relationship and treats Bangalore Roy with respect. Bangalore Roy has conflicts with Rai because Bangalore Roy wants to marry Bindu, but Rai refuses to give his blessing.

Rai is a blustering buffoon with a sidekick named Prem (played by Anil Charanjeett), whom Rai describes as his “manager,” but Prem is really just a “yes man” lackey and a completely useless character in a mindless story. The scenes with Rai are among the most cringeworthy in “Cirkus” because Mishra’s acting is so terrible. Rai, like almost everyone else in “Cirkus,” is a one-dimensional caricature.

Bangalore Roy and Bangalore Joy travel by train to Ooty, where they want to buy a tea-making farm. At the train station, three idiotic robbers, who have stolen ₹50,000 in cash, are being chased by police. The travel bag containing the money is accidentally dropped at the train station before the robbers make their getaway on a train that also happens to be the same train that has Bangalore Roy and Bangalore Joy as passengers.

The three robbers are nitwit leader Momo (played by Siddhartha Jadhav), who has a ridiculously large pompadour, and his two, less-talkative sidekicks Mango (played by Ashish Warang) and Chikki (played by Umakant Patil), who have utterly blank personalities. Momo is not only one of the most annoying characters in “Cirkus” (a movie filled with annoying characters), but he’s also perhaps the most annoying character that movie viewers will see in any given year.

Nothing that Momo says is funny, as he shouts his lines and makes dopey facial expressions for the camera. It doesn’t help that Jadhav gives one of the worst performances in the “Cirkus” cast. A recurring “joke” in the movie is that after Momo sees an incident of electrical shocks, he hollers, “Shock you!,” in the way that people curse, “Fuck you!”

These simple-minded robbers have lost their cash, but when they see Bangalore Roy and Bangalore Joy in a train car with a travel bag full of ₹50,000 in cash, the robbers decide to steal the cash from Bangalore Roy and Bangalore Joy. Later, viewers find out that Momo wants the cash to give as a birthday gift to a powerful crime boss named Polson Dada (played by Johnny Lever), who dresses like he’s stepped out of a 1970s pimp den, even though this part of the movie takes place in the 1960s.

Bangalore Roy and Bangalore Joy immediately notice upon arriving in Ooty that strangers already know their names and seem to know who they are. Meanwhile, it should come as no surprise that Ooty Roy and Ooty Joy end up in Bangalore and they get, and they also get mistaken for the other Roy and Joy. Along the way, a taxi driver named Naagmani (played by Vrajesh Hirjee), a jeweler named Veljibhai (played by Tiku Talsania) and a bandit-turned-hotel owner named Daaku Bagheera (played by Mukesh Tiwari) get involved in the ludicrous antics.

From a visual standpoint, “Cirkus” has a lot of eye candy, but the movie’s foolish and grossly unfunny story is like overloading on bad junk food. The title of the movie is also misleading, because only a few scenes actually take place in a circus. But even those circus scenes are nothing but hollow spectacles with very little substance. “Cirkus” completely missed a potentially great story opportunity to have the circus lifestyle as a big part of the movie’s plot.

The movie’s song-and-dance musical numbers are adequate, when it comes to the choreography, but the song lyrics are so witless and boring, they ruin whatever impact the musical numbers were supposed to have. The ending of “Cirkus” hints that there will be a sequel with other characters who have a connection to Jamnadas Orphanage. “Cirkus” is an utter failure at being amusing entertainment. It’s more like an overblown, nonsensical and deceptively flashy carnival act that cheats people out of their time and money.

T-Series Films released “Cirkus” in select U.S. cinemas and in India on December 23, 2022.