Jolly LLB 3 is quite similar to Ahmedabad Air tragedy; Film crashes post successful take off
Subhash Kapoor’s Jolly LLB 3 opens with genuine promise, a farmer’s suicide over land acquisition that grounds the film in urgent social reality. For a fleeting moment, it appears the franchise might finally deliver the incisive judicial drama it has always threatened to become. That moment doesn’t last.
What follows is a frustrating exercise in squandered potential. Akshay Kumar brings his trademark earnestness to Advocate Jagdishwar Mishra, while Arshad Warsi slips back into his original Jolly persona with effortless charm. Their courtroom dynamic crackles with the kind of energy that made this franchise worth following. Saurabh Shukla, as the irascible Justice Tripathi, commands every scene he inhabits with impeccable comic timing and theatrical flair that borders on scene-theft.
The supporting cast, Seema Biswas as the grieving widow, Gajraj Rao and Ram Kapoor as the corporate antagonists, delivers uniformly strong work. These are actors who understand their characters’ stakes, even when the script doesn’t. However, both characters are frivolously created yet well enacted.
And therein lies the problem. Kapoor’s direction veers wildly between social commentary and broad comedy, never finding the tonal balance that would serve either ambition. The screenplay abandons its serious themes for cheap laughs and implausible plot machinations. What begins as a meditation on land rights and judicial corruption devolves into courtroom slapstick that undermines the very issues it claims to champion.
The film’s structural problems become glaring in its final act, which opts for manipulative sentiment over earned drama. The legal arguments lose coherence, the social critique evaporates, and we’re left with a hollow spectacle that wastes its considerable talent on empty theatrics.
Jolly LLB 3 exemplifies Bollywood’s recurring failure to treat serious subjects with appropriate gravity. The performances deserve a better film; the subject matter demands sharper writing. What we get instead is a missed opportunity dressed up as entertainment, watchable but ultimately hollow, competent but disappointingly safe.
The verdict? Guilty of mediocrity in the first degree.
About The Author
