What appeared as a generic buddy-law Bollywood comedy proved itself to be a much more sentimental and mind-grabbing piece of contemporary cinema.
This 2025 Akshay Kumar film can be included in those Bollywood comedies that try to make a serious point somewhere in the film for the sake of textbook filmmaking. However, I would say that this one actually made a point.
Largely because the ‘serious point’ they were trying to make did not take the backseat behind the comedy, as Bollywood tends to do and ends up making an endless stream of pointless, dare I say, ‘cheap’ comedies.
So, back to the third film in a trilogy, the first two of which no one really cared about, it is what plain film analysts like me generically call ‘thought-provoking’.
Because it put the spotlight on an ‘issue of the people.’
I mean, I guess all public issues of our society are in some way ‘issues of the people’. My point is, the plotline revolved around the timeless ‘rich vs. poor’ trope. Where, of course, the rich are the antagonists and the poor are the helpless-innocent-good-guys.
But they did something that elevated the film’s depiction from a simple trope to box office cinema. They added moral complexity.
More on that later. For now, let’s just delve into the highlights. What I feel were the highlights.
That’s the serious point they made.
The animosity and enmity between the rich and the poor. The conflicting choice between ‘protecting your origins and honouring traditions’ and ‘the real-world burden of making your name on the world stage’. The delicate balance between ‘being true to your soil and ancestral values’ and ‘working towards evolution to be on pace with the competitive world.’
This contrast, this enmity, is brought to a climax near the third act. A race track is constructed in the Rajasthani desert by our ultra-rich (cough) antagonist (cough) entrepreneurs. And an ultra-lavish and westernized car race has commenced. As the race cars zap through the laps, the rich organizers are well into enjoying their eccentricity and lavishness.
But then. We need a third act.
So, the cars suddenly slow down, crashing in the process. An army of camels, with farmers on their backs, is on the track, marching against them. These are camels of the desert, brightly decorated. They’re marching against the cars, and they can do nothing but reverse. The camels feel hard concrete under their feet where there was once the sand of their desert. Their soil.
With no word being spoken, the commentators are stunned, the billionaire organizers are stunned, the world is stunned.
Making a statement does not get better than this.
And this image asks the wider question of this movie: whether to reshape your homeland for evolution or conserve it to hold near and dear the beautiful legacies of ancestral pride.
It is a question asked of a viewer. And it is a tough one.
I mean… to be fair… it’s not really. Because the film does not frame it in much ambiguity.
The film pushes the idea of ‘honour’ and ‘integrity of your soil’ above all else. Personally, I would say that is one extreme.
My answer would be balance. Which, of course, is much easier said than done.
Well, cinematically speaking, winning a public interest case, getting the final word over the bad guys, bringing down the ‘Bikaner to Bombay’ billboard with an agricultural tractor, and giving all the payoffs imaginable, is much more attractive storytelling.
Much more attractive than showing the accommodative integration of new technologies into cultural life that effectively takes generations.
Which I would say is all right. I can’t complain about it because, man, the grandma ripping the cheque in front of Khetan’s face is one of the most satisfying scenes I have ever seen.
And the emotional depth this movie was able to achieve actually hurts my brain.
And I am not talking about Akshay Kumar. It’s the grandma.
Janki Rajaram Solanki, played by the show-stoppingly marvelous Seema Biswas, was absolutely soul-gripping.
The plainness of her behaviour, the emptiness behind her eyes, somehow portray the gravity of her loss so well. She speaks so little. It’s just her big eyes, her beaten-down body from years of labour, and a resolve that shakes the money-lust of the lawyers.
The absolute grief that she is able to portray in every single frame she holds (while not speaking much) shows that there is a world of pain behind her calm demeanor. Her silence and slow movements make the viewer think she might be on the brink of giving up from helplessness. After all, she is so small, so powerless in the world. But impossibly, she keeps on going.
She embodies the downtrodden, the powerless. And it is beyond impossible not to root for her.
I mean, look at her. She’s gorgeous.
Where I think the movie shone its brightest was during Khetan’s speech. Because it was during the delivery of those words that the viewer is forced to dabble with the timeless trope of rich vs. poor.
In that scene, Khetan’s words perfectly embody how we have been indoctrinated into believing that the poor are always the downtrodden and marginalised good guys.
He puts into perspective our partiality and bias.
That for sure caught me off guard, and forced my immature brain to reconsider everything I know about who is good and who is bad.
But of course, what is the rich antagonist there for if not to trick our brain with his well-trained speech skills and immaculately crafted wordplay designed to shift public opinion in his favour.
Then there’s the age-old cliché. Do the right thing, even if it’s hard.
We are deliberately shown the borderline financial situation of both the lawyers and how desperate they are willing to become.
But despite those impulses, they choose to side with the right path.
And this shows us two things:
Overall, Jolly LLB 3 was a very well-crafted film. The comedic banter is there to entertain, and the moral complexity is there to provoke your thoughts.
I would highly recommend this watch.
Thank you for your reading time. I wish you financially stable times as well as a balanced combination of modern evolution with your culture.