What about 'Stree 2: Sarkate Ka Aatank'?
Inside Amar Kaushik’s Stree 2, there are two wolves. One happens to be the highly ripped Varun Dhawan’s Bhediya with its familiar goldish grey CGI fur. And the other happens to be the equally sharp-toothed writing. It’s dense, it’s pacy, it doesn’t shy away from having fun with its central quartet of characters (to the point where it even recklessly meanders in the face of impending doom), all the while staying consistent with its foundational theme of how gender is perceived. With the movie’s antagonist ‘Sarkata’ having the superpower to insert peak Andrew-Tate energy into Chanderi’s male residents. And Stree appearing as the playful reminder of the trope that be it ghost or human, 1974 or 2024, Hindi cinema can always set its climactic scene—or the final boss battle—into motion with a loud and melodramatic echo of the word, Maa.
What started as a somewhat mild-mannered, measured, cheeky and satirical take on misogyny in Stree 1, the much-awaited sequel takes the baton, makes a dash, evolves, and erupts into a jam-packed, high-voltage Stephen King-esque thriller full of jumpscares–I repeat, FULL of jumpscares–that never misses a chance to take a dig at internet culture. Or poignantly point towards the fragility and the insecurity in everyday, ordinary men. Or poke fun at the alpha male discourse in what seems to be writer Niren Bhatt’s answer to Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s understanding of society – made apparent with the low-hanging (yet deliciously tempting) fruit of taking a piss at Animal (“Tu bhediya hai, animal mat ban” ) in one of the film’s many post-credit exchanges. Now, combine it with the fact that Stree 2’s box office collection has toppled Animal’s, and you get a family pack-sized dose of Schadenfreude.
While the appreciation is all good and rightly deserved, in terms of having well-fleshed out female characters with agency, the writing still leaves something to be desired. Like – painting a picture of patriarchy for an audience through male characters, while being effective and well-executed, is still a very mainstream architecture that the film gladly holds on to.
Shraddha Kapoor’s unnamed character is grossly underused. The screenplay denies her any chance of embarking on a character arc, let alone developing one (maybe to camouflage her later plot twist, who knows?). Sure, Kapoor swinging her braid at Sarkata as a desi parallel to Wonder Woman’s lasso is one of the highlights of the film. But the writing so desperately clenches on the need to make a hero out of Rajkumar Rao’s Vicky, it lays all potentialities of the female characters having a significant say in their own patriarchy-infused pandemic – to bed.
Even Shama, played by the gorgeous Tammannah Bhatia, is merely inserted as an eye candy who casually accepts her pen pal Rudra’s invitation to act as a pig for slaughter. Not to mention, Rudra’s reaction to Shama’s abduction later comes off as too insincere for its context. Nonetheless, the film does most things right. But when the title literally says ‘Stree’, it does call for an open investigation into the film’s core politics with a magnifying glass, and when you do so, the eyepiece does reveal a bit of male gaze but deniably so.
And not to forget, the joke-writing deserves its own flowers. The film has some of the best humour I’ve seen lately in mainstream cinema. While a lot of these dialogues are incredibly smart, the script has the sense and sensibility to mix it up with enough dad jokes to beat the building-waale-uncles in their own game. Without spoiling it too much, the “Disha Batani” comment got me chuckling long after the screenplay had moved on. And so did the very Karunesh-Talwar type of dialogue deliveries (mostly by Tripathi’s Rudra) marked via overly stressed Hindi syllables to facilitate comic reactions.
Overall, the Stree Cinematic Universe (Stree-verse? Sheverse? Streelogy?) deserves more than just five stars. It's a much-needed reminder that simply templatising Western Franchises won’t work. And neither will a star-studded cast (sorry Kalki, Brahmastra). What might work is to provoke our parasocial, human desire to root for memorable characters.
Will Bittu finally get a nurturing partner who appreciates his lullabies? Will Vicky find love again? Will Janna crack the IAS exams? These are questions we want to find out – so bring it on.