Pawan Kalyan is foraying into Hindi cinema with Sardar Gabbar Singh, the sequel to his 2012 hit Gabbar Singh, which saw him playing a bumbling comic cop for the first time.
The cop Gabbar is unmistakably inspired by Salman Khan’s Dabangg act. To remind us of how close Pawan’s Gabbar was to Salman’s Chulbul Pandey, there was even an item song by Malaika Arora in Gabbar Singh, as there was in Dabangg.
Pawan’s fans loved Gabbar Singh and this time PK is coming up with an even more blatant homage to Salman’s Chulbul.
Sardar Gabbar Singh takes Pawan Kalyan’s comic cop-shot to an imaginary princely kingdom named Rattanpur terrorised by a zamindar named Bhairav Singh (Sharad Kelkar). Pawan enters halfway through the trailer, his arrival announced by the visual version of bugles.
This guy is clearly in it for the heroics of Salman Khan. That seems a bit of a shame. I don’t see Bollywood audiences warming up to Pawan’s Dabangg act. Besides, why would a star of his stature want to enter Hindi cinema as a wannabe Salman?
The trailer of the film directed by K.S. Ravindranath looks like a Hindi film made in the 1960s by one of the Chennai-based studios like AVM Studios and Gemini Films which specialized in princely potboilers. Lamentably Sharad Kelkar’s antagonist act leaves a more robust impression than Pawan Kalyan’s clumsy khaki-clad heroics.
The two trailers of the bi-lingual, in Hindi and Telugu, are identical in content except that in Hindi, Pawan Kalyan’s voice is dubbed. I also spotted the very talented Tisca Chopra in one shot, garishly painted and made-up to look like royalty.
The Hindi version of SGH, which is being released alongside the Telugu version with much fanfare on April 8, is bound to be a complete loser.
