A Punjabi film with an English title, ‘Singh is Kinng’ is Akshay Kumar’s coronation film as Bollywood’s king. Or so is the overt attempt.
Akshay Kumar plays Happy Singh, a bumbling trouble-maker for the denizens of his village in Punjab. As much as everybody in director Anees Bazmee-land is a caricature, be it the villages in Punjab, Mumbai, South Africa (‘Welcome’), Egypt or Australia, they are smart-enough to make decisions to propel the film forward, thenceforth existing for the sole purpose of showcasing stars’ talents for comedy, romance, dance & action.
The villagers expressly banish a pranky Happy Singh off to Australia (to bring back a mafia King) ridding themselves of his antics while they don’t seem to mind substituting another deaded villager (the mafia king) in his place who Happy Singh is entrusted with bringing back to the village.
Sure enough, Akshay Kumar’s Happy Singh reforms the desi mafia in Australia, pontificates the worth of family & do-gooding, finds a mother in Kiron Kher, dances with mother’s daughter (Katrina Kaif), woos her, & ultimately wins her for himself joining Snoop Dogg in the film’s end credits for a reiteration of being ‘The Kinng’.
It is difficult to distinguish the comedians in the film as every single character seems to have been asked to resort to comedy whenever they deem fit, and/or when their co-actors’ comedy isn’t working well-enough.
Akshay Kumar definitely is the star of the moment having delivered more consecutive hits than any other in the last couple of years. But in all his career, evidently, Akshay Kumar hasn’t dabbled with a rare entity (in Bollywood) called Good Cinema (or just Cinema, as opposed to pickture), where the canvas is as big as his stardom deems he deserve but at the same time entirely plausible, written (not gags invented on sets), aesthetic, & tasteful.
Rajinikanth's stardom is built on Modesty - the more he's modest on screen (about his achievements) bigger is the audience's reaction insisting his greatness. Akshay Kumar sems to be treading a similar path; he doesn't feature in any of the action sequences, because he doesn't have to - people's memory of him as an action star is enough to fill-in, and enjoy the modest darling as lovable, desirable, touching, oh-so-cute!
Am reminded of the Golda Meir quote, "Don't be modest. You aren't that great." Akshay Kumar, with his obvious magical powers on screen, proves modesty to be the preserve of 'The Arrived'. He also proves that the films of the incumbent kings of Bollywood are as good or as bad as the ones he’s anointed his kingdom on, depending on one’s nostalgia-quotient.
Little do our Bollywood stars need be told that investing in well-crafted scripts and films would as surely account for the present generation's future nostalgia too.
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